Changes

One way at looking at the relationshipbetween fantasy and the big Other is to think ==Sigmund Freud==The [[concept]] of [[fantasy as concealing the inconssistency of the Symbolic Order. To understand this we need to know why the big Other ]] is inconsistent or structured around a gap. The answer central to this question is that when the body enters the field [[Freud]]'s [[Works of signification or the big Other, it is castratedSigmund Freud|work]]. What Zizek means by this <ref>"[[Fantasy]]" is that the price we pay for our admission to the univerdal medium of language is the loss of our full body selves. When we submit to the big Other we sacrifice direct access to our bodies and, instead, are condenmned to an indirect relation with it via the medium of language. So, whereas, before we enter language we are what Zizek terms spelt "pathological[[fantasy|phantasy]]" subjects (the subject he notates by S), after we are immersed in language we are what he refers to as "barred" subjects (the empty subject he notates with $)''[[Standard Edition]]''. What is barred from the barred subject is precisely </ref> Indeed, the body as the materialization or incarnation origin of enjoyment (jouissance). Material jouissance [[psychoanalysis]] is strictly at odds bound up with, or heterogenous to, [[Freud]]'s [[recognition]] in 1897 that [[memory|memories]] of [[seduction]] are sometimes the immaterial order product of [[fantasy]] rather than traces of the signifier[[real]] [[sexual]] abuse.For the subject to enter the Symbolic Order, then, This crucial [[moment]] in the Real [[development]] of jouissance or enjoyment has to be evacuated from it. Which [[Freud]]'s [[thought]] (which is another way to saying that the advent of the symbol entails often simplistically dubbed "the murder abandonment of the thingseduction [[theory]]". Although not all jouissance is completely evacuated by the process of signification (some of it persists in what are called the erogenous zones), most of it is not Symbolized. And this entails seems to imply that the Symbolic Order cannot fully account for jouissance - it [[fantasy]] is what us missing in the big Other. The big Other is therefore inconsistent or structured around opposed to [[reality]], a lack, the lack purely [[illusory]] product of jouissance. It is, we might say, castrated or rendered icomplete by admitting the subject, [[imagination]] which stands in much the same way as the subject is castrated by its admission.What fantasy does is conceal this lack or incompletion. So, as we saw previoulsly when alluding to the formulas of sexuation, "there is not sexual relationship" in the big Other. What the fantasy of a sexual scenario thereby conceals is the impossibility correct [[perception]] of this sexual relationshipreality. It covers up the lack in the big Other However, the missing jouissance. In this regard, Zizek often avers that fantasy is such a way for subjects to organize their jouissance - it is a way to manage or domesticate the traumatic loss view of the jouissance which [[fantasy]] cannot be Symbolized.==deff==For Zizekmaintained in [[psychoanalytic theory]], racism since [[reality]] is produced by a clash of fantasies rather than by a clash of symbols vying for supremacy. There are several distinguishing features of fantasy:1. Fantasies are produced not seen as a defence against the desire of the Other manifest an unproblematic given in "What do you want from me?" - which there is what the Other, in its incosnsistency, really wants from me.2. Fantasies provide a framework through which we see reality. They are anamorphic in that they presuppose a point single objectively correct way of viewperceiving, denying us an objective account of the world.3. Fantasise are the one unique thing about us. They are what make us individuals, allowing a subjective view of reality. As such, our fantasies are extremely sensitive to the intrusion of others.4. Fantasies are the way in but as something which we organize and domesticate our jouissanceis itself discursively constructed.==def==121 Conversations

[[Freud]] uses the term "[[fantasy ( fantasme) ]]", then, to denote a [[scene]] which is presented to the imagination and which [[stages]] an [[unconscious]] [[desire]]. The concept of [[subject]] invariably plays a part in this [[scene]], even when this is not immediately [[apparent]]. The [[fantasy (spelt 'phantasy' in |fantasized]] [[scene]] may be [[conscious]] or [[unconscious]]. When [[unconscious]], the [[analyst]] must reconstruct it on thebasis of other clues.<ref>{{F}} "[[Works of Sigmund Freud|A Child Is Being Beaten]]," 1919e. [[SE]] XVII, 177.</ref>

Standard Edition) is central to ==Jacques Lacan=====Protection Function===While [[Lacan]] accepts [[Freud]]'s workformulations on the importance of [[fantasy]] and on its [[visual]] quality as a scenario which stages [[desire]], he emphasizes the protective function of [[fantasy]]. Indeed [[Lacan]] compares the [[fantasy]] [[scene]] to a frozen [[image]] on a [[cinema]] [[screen]]; just as the [[film]] may be stopped at a certain point in [[order]] to avoid showing a [[trauma]]tic [[scene]] which follows, so also the origin of psycho[[fantasy]] [[scene]] is a [[defence]] which veils [[castration]].<ref>{{S4}} pp. 119-120</ref> The [[fantasy]] is thus characterized by a fixed and immobile quality.

analysis ===Defence and Clinical Structure===Although "[[fantasy]]" only emerges as a significant term in [[Lacan]]'s [[work]] from 1957 on, the concept of a relatively [[stable]] mode of [[defence]] is bound up with Freudevident earlier on. This concept is at the root both of [[Lacan]]'s recognition [[idea]] of [[fantasy]] and his [[notion]] of [[clinical structure]]; both are conceived of as a relatively stable way of defending oneself against [[castration]], against the [[lack]] in 1897 that memories ofthe [[Other]]. Each [[clinical structure]] may thus be distinguished by the [[particular]] way in which it uses a [[fantasy]] [[scene]] to [[veil]] the [[lack]] in the [[Other]].

seduction are sometimes ===Neurotic Fantasy===The [[neurotic]] [[fantasy]], which [[Lacan]] formalizes in the [[matheme]] ('''$ <> a'''), appears in the product [[graph of desire]] as the [[subject]]'s response to the enigmatic [[desire]] of the [[Other]], a way of answering the question [[about]] what the [[Other]] wants from me. (''[[Che vuoi?]]'')<ref>{{E}} p. 313</ref>The [[matheme]] is to be read: the [[bar]]red [[subject]] in relation to the [[object]]. The [[perverse]] [[fantasy rather than traces of real]] inverts this relation to the [[object]], and is thus formalized as '''''a'' <> $'''.<ref>{{Ec}} p. 774</ref>

sexual abuse===Fantasy of the Hysteric and Obsessional Neurotic===Although the [[matheme]] ('''S <> a''') designates the general [[structure]] of the [[neurotic]] [[fantasy]], [[Lacan]] also provides more specific [[formulas]] for the [[fantasy]] of the [[hysteric]] and that of the [[obsessional neurotic]]. This crucial moment in <ref>{{S8}} p. 295</ref> While the development various formulas of Freud[[fantasy]] indicate the common features of the [[fantasy|fantasies]] of those who share the same [[clinical structure]], the [[analyst]] must also attend to the unique features which characterise each [[patient]]'s thoughtparticular fantasmatic scenario.

(===Fantasy and the Subject===These unique features express the [[subject]]'s particular mode of ''[[jouissance]]'' though in a distorted way. The [[distortion]] evident in the [[fantasy]] marks it as a compromise [[formation]]; the [[fantasy]] is thus both that which enables the [[subject]] to sustain his [[desire]],<ref>{{S11}} p. 185; {{Ec}} p. 780</ref> and "that by which is often simplistically dubbed 'the abandonment subject sustains himself at the level of the seductionhis vanishing desire."<ref>{{E}} p. 272</ref>

theory') seems to imply ===Fundamental Fantasy===[[Lacan]] holds that beyond all the myriad [[images]] which appear in [[dream]]s and elsewhere there is always one "[[fantasy|fundamental fantasy ]]" which is opposed [[unconscious]].<ref>{{S8}} p. 127</ref> In the course of [[psychoanalytic treatment]], the [[analyst]] reconstructs the [[analysand]]'s [[fantasy]] in all its details. However, the [[treatment]] does not stop there; the analysand must go on to reality"[[fantasy|traverse the fundamental fantasy]]."<ref>{{S11}} p. 273</ref> In other [[words]], the [[treatment]] must produce some modification of the [[subject]]'s fundamental mode of [[defence]], a purely illusorysome alteration in his mode of ''[[jouissance]]''.

product ===Image and Symbolic Structure===Although [[Lacan]] recognizes the [[power]] of the [[image]] in [[fantasy]], he insists that this is due not to any intrinsic quality of the imagination [[image]] in itself but to the [[place]] which stands it occupies in a [[symbolic]] [[structure]]; the [[fantasy]] is always "an image set to work in a signifying structure."<ref>{{E}} p. 272</ref> <!--===Kleinian Account of Fantasy===[[Lacan]] criticizes the way [[Klein]]ian account of [[fantasy]] for not taking this [[symbolic]] [[structure]] fully into account, and thus remaining at the level of the [[imaginary]]; "any attempt to reduce [fantasy] to the imagination . . . is a permanent misconception."<ref>{{E}} p. 272</ref> In the 1960s, [[Lacan]] devotes a correct perception [[whole]] year of his [[seminar]] to discussing what he calls "the [[logic]] of fantasy," again stressing the importance ofthe [[signification|signifying]] [[structure]] in [[fantasy]].<ref>{{S14}}</ref>-->

== In the work of Slavoj Žižek ==Like many of Žižek’s foundational theories, fantasy derives from the [[psychoanalytic]] work of Freud and Lacan. For Freud, fantasy emerged in his 1897 discovery that [[memories]] of seduction may be the result of fantasy as opposed to actual sexual [[violence]]. In common parlance, fantasy denotes a [[separation]] from reality, a [[construction]] that is fictional and therefore opposed to reality. Freud’s discovery, though, challenges this widespread [[understanding]]. For psychoanalysis, reality is problematic when it is assumed that it distinguishes authentic or unmediated [[experience]] for the subject. Reality is more properly [[understood]] as a way of perceiving that is already stained by the [[human]] subject’s desire. Therefore, realityis already a [[subjective]] [[process]] mediated by desire and constructed discursively. HoweverFantasy, then, such [[acts]] as a view scene that stages desire in the imagination of the subject. For this [[reason]], Lacan states in his fourteenth seminar, ''The [[Logic of Fantasy]]'': “Desire is the [[essence]] of reality” (''S''XIV: 6). The principal point for Lacan, here, is that fantasy is the setting for desire where fantasy cannot be maintained in psycho-provides the [[matrix]] through which [[subjects]] begin to desire.

analytic theoryFor Žižek, since reality fantasy is not seen as an unproblematic exercise in fulfilment, contentment or [[satisfaction]]. Instead, it provides a scene for a privileged yet [[arbitrary]] object that embodies the force of desire. The foundational premise of fantasy in this rendering lies in the [[claim]] that desire is not something that is given ; rather, it is assembled. Therefore, fantasy acts as a structure that provides the coordinates for a subject’s desire. That is, fantasy provides the idea of a privileged object that desire fixates on in order to provide the subject with its [[position]] in relation to it. This privileged object acts as the ''[[objet petit a]]'' or object-[[cause]] of desire. This object [[structures]] the subject’s experience of the [[world]] in whichso far as this object is taken as more than its [[material]] property. The object that consumes desire and therefore occupies the fantasy of the subject must first fall prey to the [[illusion]] that it is more than its pragmatic material. The object is marked by this structure as being more than its materiality, as being endowed with the promise to [[satisfy]] the desire that necessitates it. Thus, fantasy acts as the mode whereby the subject learns to desire because through fantasy the subject is situated as [[desiring]].

there The role fantasy plays is twofold: [[universal]] and particular. Fantasy is a single objectively correct universal structure that indexes, points or directs our desire towards a [[physical]] manifestation that occupies desire. Yet, what is particular to each and every subject is the way fantasy structures the relation to the trauma of lack predicated by desire. This constitutive lack that the privileged object promises to fulfil acts as a screen that orients each fantasy, which in turn supports desire in order to shield the subject from the trauma of perceivinglack itself. In this way, but fantasy bestows reality with a fictional [[coherence]] and consistency that appears to fulfil the lack that constitutes [[social]] reality. Hence, Žižek’s foremost contribution to this long-theorized notion lies in showing how fantasy serves as something a [[political]] structure. He reveals how fantasy can fill in [[ideological]] gaps and provide access to [[obscene]] ''[[jouissance]]'', and he contends that a failure to explicate the essence of political beliefs does not imply any failure in the hold these beliefs have over us. Instead, political [[ideologies]] serve to give subjects a means of envisioning the world in whichsuch a failure emerges as evidence as to how transcendent is their particular [[ideology]]. Fantasy serves [[politics]] precisely in that each political group must recognize its point of view as manifested in the extrapolitical fantasy [[objects]] customary within that specific [[nation]], [[culture]] or [[religion]]. If not, these groups must displace the sitting ideologies’ fantasy objects with their chosen manifestations. Consequently, for Žižek, fantasy goes beyond the usual symbolic coordinates, so that [[traversing]] the fantasy does not mean getting rid of the fantasy but being even more taken up by it.

Fantasy, therefore, acts as a way for the subject to envisage a way out of the [[dissatisfaction]] produced by the [[demands]] of [[social reality]] through these objects or ideas (e.g. [[freedom]], brotherhood, the [[Church]]). In this [[sense]], fantasy is a [[psychological]] structure that manifests itself in a [[phenomenological]] [[form]]. And, while fantasy might not provide us with the object itself discursively constructed, it can provide something of equal consequence: the scene of attaining the privileged object that renders attainment as a possibility. Therefore Fantasy organizes and domesticates the ''jouissance'' that provides the framework through which we experience reality; therefore, this structure – and the arbitrary object that animates it – acts as a defence against the [[traumatic]] [[loss]] of ''jouissance'' that occurs through entering [[the change symbolic]] order. In turn, fantasy can surface in Freud's ideas a more evident socio-symbolic way inwhich it assuages unrest by depoliticizing the social [[body]] for the purposes of accepting a ruling ideology. Fantasy thus serves as a way to distract, even encourage, the [[social body]] from directly engaging with the dissatisfaction of lack. Although lack is constitutive of every human subject, the political advocacy of a social body can [[help]] organize a [[society]] better to manage dissatisfaction as a by-product of the demands of that social reality. Therefore, fantasy acts as a way to fracture political [[unity]] by focusing attention on [[individual]] satisfaction imagined to be the promise of a unique privileged object.

1897 does not imply Because fantasy offers the promise of satisfaction as part of a privileged object, we [[understand]] this object as being apart from our [[self]]. [[Enjoyment]] derived from this fantasy image is therefore projected onto the Other. As a path to [[repress]] the idea of a non-[[lacking]] subject, the subject we fantasize and therefore imagine as a possibility, we [[project]] onto the Other the enjoyment we lack. Žižek argues that this places the subject in a position of understanding the Other obtaining enjoyment at our expense. Because we are able to fantasize an [[impossible]] enjoyment, we also misattribute this [[impossibility]] to an Other that seems to [[enjoy]] in a rejection way we cannot experience but only imagine. Since fantasy provides us with the coordinates to domesticate our [[desire,]] in order to fulfil lack we rarely attribute lack as an experience beyond our self. The [[distinction]] between our own lack of impossible enjoyment and the non-lacking status of the veracity Other opens the possibility of a violence predicated on destroying the enjoyment we fantasize this Other to possess at our expense. [[The logic of fantasy]] in relation to lack suggests that, if I am lacking, it is because some other nefarious [[figure]] has stolen it, and thus the lack of lack, as it were, becomes an object of possession under [[capitalism]]. This rendering is consistent with Žižek’s assertion that fantasy leads to all memories varieties of sexualdiscrimination: [[racism]], sexism, ageism and [[homophobia]], among [[others]]. Th is non-lacking status takes the form of a person or [[thing]] we understand through [[cultural]] [[myth]] or [[capitalist]] ideology.

abuseConsequently, but fantasy offers us the illusion that the object we pursue will assuage the discomfort of lack. In this formulation, desire is separated from [[drive]] because it privileges the object of our fantasy that presents itself as the [[cure]] for lack. Desire, in this [[case]], predicates its function on the attainment of the object of our fantasies, while drive reaches satisfaction through the continual pursuit of this object. That is, drive functions through the [[repetition]] of this cycle whereas desire places [[faith]] in the discovery redeeming quality of the fundamentally discursive object. The privileged object of our desire and imaginativethe fantasy that supports it act in two ways: (a) as the site where the human subject invests in the hope for an enjoyment (''jouissance'') that will [[return]] the subject to a non-lacking [[state]], which allows each human subject to tolerate this status; and (b) as a fantasmatic, and thus arbitrary, promise of a non-lacking status that does not [[exist]], which replaces a [[partial]] and obtainable enjoyment by holding out the idea of a [[total]] enjoyment that it ultimately cannot produce or [[guarantee]]. Desire constantly moves forwards from object to object because each new instantiation of our fantasy fails to provide the satisfaction the human subject believes it will provide. In this sense, fantasy remains the same, but our desire forces us to continue the [[search]] for the impossible owing to the inherent failure each object represents. Because the subject does not lack an experiential object, lack is misattributed as a [[negative]] [[category]] that can be overcome by addition.

    nature of memory; memories of past events are continually being reshaped in  accordance with unconscious desires, so much so that symptoms originate not  in any supposed 'objective facts' but in a complex dialectic in which fantasy  plays a vital role. Freud uses the term 'fantasy', then, to denote a scene which  is presented to the imagination and which stages an unconscious desire. The  subject invariably plays a part in this scene, even when this is not immediately  apparent. The fantasised scene may be conscious or unconscious. When  unconscious, the analyst must reconstruct it on the basis of other clues (see  Freud, 1919e).  While Lacan accepts Freud's formulations on the importance of fantasy and  on its visual quality as a scenario which stages desire, he emphasises the  protective function of fantasy. Lacan compares the fantasy SCENE (OR fTOZen  image on a cinema screen; just as the film may be stopped at a certain point in  order to avoid showing a traumatic scene which follows, so also the fantasy  scene is a defence which veils castration (S4, l 19-20). The fantasy is thus  characterised by a fixed and immobile quality.  Although 'fantasy' only emerges as a significant term in Lacan's work from  1957 on, the concept of a relatively stable mode of DEFENCE iS evident earlier  on (see, for example, Lacan's remark in 1951 on 'the permanent modes by  which the subject constitutes his objects'; Ec, 225). This concept is at the root  both of Lacan's idea of fantasy and of his notion of clinical structure; both are  conceived of as a relatively stable way of defending oneself against castration,  against the lack in the Other. Each clinical structure may thus be distinguished  by the particular way in which it uses a fantasy scene to veil the lack in the  Other. The neurotic fantasy, which Lacan formalises in the matheme (SO a),  appears in the graph of desire as the subject's response to the enigmatic desire  of the Other, a way of answering the question about what the Other wants from  me (Che vuoi?) (see E, 313). The matheme is to be read: the barred subject in  relation to the object. The perverse fantasy inverts this relation to the object,  and is thus formalised as a OS (Ec, 774).  Although the matheme (SO a) designates the general structure of the  neurotic fantasy, Lacan also provides more specific formulas for the fantasy  of the hysteric and that of the obsessional neurotic (S8, 295). While the various  formulas of fantasy indicate the common features of the fantasies of those who  share the same clinical structure, the analyst must also attend to the unique  features which characterise each patient's particular fantasmatic scenario.  These unique features express the subject's particular mode of ./OUISSANCE,  though in a distorted way. The distortion evident in the fantasy marks it as a  compromise formation; the fantasy is thus both that which enables the subject  to sustain his desire (Sll, 185; Ec, 780), and 'that by which the subject  sustains himself at the level of his vanishing desire' (E, 272, emphasis added).  Lacan holds that beyond all the myriad images which appear in dreams and  elsewhere there is always one 'fundamental fantasy' which is unconscious (see  S8, 127). In the course of psychoanalytic treatment, the analyst reconstructs     the analysand's fantasy in all its details. However, the treatment does not stop there; the analysand must go on to 'traverse the fundamental fantasy' (see S11, 273). In other words, the treatment must produce some modification of the subject's fundamental mode of defence, some alteration in his mode of jouissance.  Although Lacan recognises the power of the image in fantasy, he insists that this is due not to any intrinsic quality of the image in itself but to the place which it occupies in a symbolic structure; the fantasy is always 'an image set  to work in a signifying structure' (E, 272). Lacan criticises the Kleinian  account of fantasy for not taking this symbolic structure fully into account, and thus remaining at the level of the imaginary; 'any attempt to reduce [fantasy] to the imagination . . . is a permanent misconception' (E, 272). In the 1960s, Lacan devotes a whole year of his seminar to discussing what he calls 'the logic of fantasy' (Lacan, 1966-7), again stressing the importance of the signifying structure in fantasy.  == def See Also=={{See}}Fantasy (fantasme) The concept of fantasy is central to Freud’s work. Indeed, the origin of * [[psychoanalysisCastration]] is bound up with Freud’s recognition in 1897 that memories of seduction are sometimes the product of fantasy rather than traces of real sexual abuse. This crucial moment in the development of Freud’s thought seems to imply that fantasy is opposed to reality, a purely illusory product of the imagination which stands in the way of a correct perception of reality. However, such a view of fantasy cannot be maintained in psychoanalytic theory, since reality is not seen as an unproblematic given in which there is a single objectively correct way of perceiving, but as something which is itself discursively constructed.      While Lacan accepts Freud’s formulations on the importance of fantasy and on its visual quality as a scenario which stages desire, he emphasizes the protective function of fantasy. Lacan compares the fantasy * [[sceneHysteria]] to a frozen image on a cinema screen: just as the film may be stopped at a certain point in order to avoid showing a traumatic scene which follows, so also the fantasy scene is a defence which veils * [[castrationImage]].<ref>s4 119-120</ref>The fantays is thus characterized by a fixed and immobile quality.||  60     == def == Lacan* 's Conception of Fantasy If the neurotic subject does not to forego the Oedipal supposition that there is some Thing that would fully satisfy the desire of the mother, it is because s/he constructs fantasies about the nature of this lost Thing, and how s/he stands towards it. The primary means s/he deploys in this process is what I recounted above, when I noted how the difficulty in knowing the referent of the phallic master signifiers obliges subjects to construct their beliefs concerning it in a 'decentred[[Jouissance]]' manner, through the Others. While the subject accepts that the Real phallic Thing is lost to him/her, that is, in his/her fantasmatic life s/he yet supposes that there are Others who do know what it is that phallic signifiers refer to, and have more direct access to the Real of jousissance. In line with this, Lacan's further argument is indeed that the deepest fantasmatic postulation of subjects is always that the Real Phallic Thing that s/he has been debarred from must be held in reserve by the 'big Other' whose law it is that discernibly structures the mother’s desire.What follows from this is the position that the manifestations of the unconscious represent small unconscious rebellions of the subject against the loss that s/he takes him/herself to have endured when s/he acceded to socialization. They are all under-girded by the more basic fantasmatic structuration of identity as constituted by the loss endured at castration. This is why Lacan talks of a fundamental fantasy, and argues that it is above all this fundamental fantasy that is at stake in psychoanalysis. Lacan strived to formalize the invariant structure of this 'fundamental fantasy' in the matheme: $ <> a. This matheme indicates that: '$', the ‘barred’ subject which is divided by castration between attraction to and repulsion from the Object of its unconscious desire, is correlative to ('<>') the fantasised lost object. This object, designated in the matheme as 'a', is called by Lacan the ‘object petit a’, or else the object cause of desire. Lacan holds that the subject always stabilizes its position vis-à-vis the Real Thing by constructing a fantasy about how the debarred Thing is held in the big Other, manifesting only in a series of metonymic or partial objects (the gaze or voice of his/her love objects, a hair style, or some other 'little piece of the Real') that can be enjoyed as compensation for its primordial loss of the maternal Thing. Lacan's argument is that the fundamental psychological 'gain’ from the fundamental fantasy is the following. The fundamental fantasy represents what occurred at castration in the terms of a narrative of possession and loss. This fantasm thus consoles the subject by positing that s/he at one point did have the phallic Thing, but that then, at castration, it was taken away from him/her by the Other. What this of course means is that, since the Thing was taken away from the subject, perhaps also It can be regained by him/her. It is this promise, Lacan maintains, that usually structures neurotic human desire. What the fantasy serves to hide from the subject, then, is the possibility that a fully satisfying sexual relationship with the mother, or any metonymic substitute for her, is not only prohibited, but was never possible anyway. As I recounted in Part 1, the Lacanian view, which is informed by observation of infantile behavior, is that the mother-child relationship before castration is not Edenic, but characterized by imaginary transitivity and aggressivity. This is why Lacan quips in Seminar XX that 'there is no such thing as a sexual relationship' and elsewhere that the ‘Woman’, with a capital ‘W’, 'does not exist'. Note then that the deepest logic of castration, according to Lacan, is a profoundly paradoxical one. The 'no!' of the father prohibits something that is impossible. Its very prohibition, however, gives rise in the subject to the fantasmatic supposition that the Thing in question is one that is attainable but only being debarred. Lacan thus asserts that the fundamental fantasy is there to veil from the subject the terminal nature of its loss at castration. This is not simply a speculation, however. It is supported by telling evidences that he adduces. The key point that supports Lacan's position is the stipulation the objet petit is an anamorphotic object. What this means can be seen by looking at even the most well-known exemplar of the Lacanian objet petit a: the 'object gaze'. Contrary to how it is sometimes read, the Lacanian 'gaze' is anything but the intrusive and masterful male gaze on the world. For Lacan, gaze is indeed a "blind spot" in the subject's perception of visible reality, “disturbing its transparent visibility". * [[Zizek, 1999a: 79Lack]] What it bears witness to is the subject's inability to fully frame the objects that appear within his/her field of vision. The classic example of the object-gaze from Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis is the floating skull at the feet of Holbein's Ambassadors. What is singular about this 'thing’ is that it can literally only be seen from 'awry', and at the cost that the rest of the picture appears at that moment out of focus. From this point on the canvas, Lacan comments, it is as if the painting regards us. What he means is that the skull reminds us that we, and with us our desires and fantasies, are implicated in how the scene appears. Here then is another meaning to $ <> a: the objet petit a, for Lacan, as something that can only operate its fascination upon individuals who bear a partial perspective upon it, is that object that 're-presents' the subject within the world of objects that it takes itself to be a wholly 'external' perspective upon. If a subject thus happens upon it too directly, it disappears, or else- as in psychosis and the well-known filmic motif of what happens when one encounter one's double- the cost is that one's usual sense of how the rest of the world is must dissipate. What this indicates is that the object petit a, or at least the fascinating effect the object which bears it has upon the subject who is under its thrall, has no 'objective' reality independently of this subject. The logical consequence of this, though, as Lacan stipulates, is that this supposedly 'lost' object can never really have been lost by the subject, since s/he can never have possessed it in the first place. This is why Lacan argues the apparently chimerical position that the objet petit a is by definition an object that has come into being in being lost.* [[Matheme]]==def==||Postmodern Racism* [[Neurosis]]Zizek contends that today's racism is just as reflexive as every other part of postmodern life. It is not the product of ignorance in the way it used to be. So, whereas racism used to involve a claim that another ethnic group is inherently inferior to our own, racism is now articulated in terms of a respect for another's culture. Instead of "My culture is better than yours", postmodern or reflexive racism will argue that "My culture is different from yours". As an example of this Zizek asks "was not the official argument for apartheid in the old South Africa that black culture should be preserved in its uniqueness, not dissipated in the Western melting-pot? (The Fragile Absolute, or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For) For him, what is at stake here is the fethishistic disawoval of cynicism: "I know very well that all ethnic cultures are equal in value, yet, nevertheless, I will act as if mine is superior". The split here between the subject of enunciated ("I know very well...") and the subject of the enunciation ("...nevertheless I act as if I didn't") is even preserved when racists are asked to explain the reasons for their behavior. A racist will blame his socio-economic environment, poor childhood, peer group pressure, and so on, in such a way as to suggest to Zizek that he cannot help being racist, but is merely a victim of circumstances. Thus postmodern racists are fully able to rationalize their behavior in a way that belies the traditional image of racism as the vocation of the ignorant. The Ethnic FantasyIf "ethnic tension" is a conflict of fantasies, what is then the racist fantasy? For Zizek there are two basic racist fantasies. The first type centers around the apprehension that the "ethnic other" desires our jouissance. "They" want to steal our enjoyment from "us" and rob us of the specificity of our fantasy. The second type proceeds from an uneasiness that the "ethnic other" has access to some strange jouissance. "They" do not things like "us". The way :they" enjoy themselves is alien and unfamiliar. What both these fantasies are predicated upon is that the "other" enjoys in a different way than "us":  In short, what really gets on our nerves, what really bothers us about the "other", is the peculiar way he organizes his jouissance (the smell of his food, his noisy songs and dances, his strange manners, his attitude to work - in the racist perspective, the "other" is either a workaholic stealing our jobs or an idler living on our labor. ( Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture) So ethnic tension is caused by a conflict of fantasies if we regard fantasy as a way of organizing jouissance. The specificity of "their: fantasy conflicts with the specificity of "our" fantasy".For Zizek, the perception of a threat, by "them" as well as by "us", remains strong. The last two decades have witnessed a marked rise in racial tension and ethnic nationalism. Following Lacan and Marx, Zizek ascribes this rise to the process of globalization. This process refers to the way in which capitalism has spread across the world. displaceing local companies in favor of multinational ones. The effects of this process are nor necessarily just commercial, for what is at stake are the national cultures and politics bodies which underpin, and are supported by, resident industries. When McDonald's opens up in Bombay, for example, it is not just another business, but represents a specifically American approach to food, culture and social organization. The more capitalism spreads, the more it works to dissolve the efficacy of national domains, dissipating local traditions and values in favor of universal ones.The only way to offset this increased homogeneity and to assert the worth of the particular against the global is to cling to our specific ethnic fantasy, the point of view which makes us Indians, British or Germans. And if we try to avoid being dissolved in the multicultural mix of globalization by sticking to the way we organize jouissance, we will court the risk of succumbing to a racist paranoia. Even if we attempt to institute a form of equality between the ways in which we aorganize enjoyment, unfortunately, as Zizek points out, "fantasies cannot coexist peacefully" (Looking Awry The Ethics of FantasyFor Zizek is the state that should act as a buffer between the fantasies of different groups, mitigating the worst effects of thoses fantasies. If civil society were allowed to rule unrestrained, much of the world would succumb to racist violence. It is only the forces of the state which keep it in check.In the long term, Zizek argues that in order to avoid a clash of fantasies we have to learn to "traverse the fantasy" (what lacan terms "traversing the fantôme). It means that we have to acknowledge that fantasy merely functions to screen the abyss or inconsistency in the Other. In "traversing" or "going through" the fantasy "all we have to do is experience how there is nothing 'behind' it, and how fantasy masks precisely this 'nothing'". (The Sublime Object of Ideology<)The subject of racism, be it a Jew, a Muslim, a Latino, an African-American, gay or lesbian, Chinese, is a fantasy figure, someone who embodies the void of the Other. The underlying argument of all racism is that "if only they weren't here, ife would be perfect, and society will be haromious again". However, what this argument misses is the fact that because the subject of racism is only a fantasy figure, it is only there to make us think that such a harmonious society is actually possible. In reality, society is always-already divided. The fantasy racist figure is just a way of covering up the impossibility of a whole society or an organic Symbolic Order complete unto itself:  What appears as the hindrance to society's full identity with itself is actually its positive condition: by transposing onto the Jew the role of the foreign body which introduces in the social organism disintegration and antagonism, the fantasy-image of society qua consistent, harmonious whole is rendered possible. (Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Holliwood and Out) Which is another way of saying that if the Jew qua fantasy figure was not there, we would have to invent it so as to maintain the illusion that we could have a perfect society. For all the fantasy figure does is to embody the existing impossibility of a complete society.==ref== http://www.lacan.com/zizekchro1.htm* [[Obsessional neurosis]]* [[Structure]]||* [[Subject]]* [[Category:TermsTreatment]]* [[Category:ConceptsUnconscious]]{{Also}}

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