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==Introduction==
The [[real]] is one of [[Lacan]]'s most difficult and at the same [[time]] most interesting [[concepts]]. The difficulty of [[understanding]] [[The Real|the real ]] is partly due to the fact that it is not a '[[thing]]'; it is not a [[material]] [[object]] in the [[world]] or the [[human]] [[body]] or even '[[reality]]'. For Lacan, our reality consists of [[symbols]] and the [[process]] of [[signification]]. Therefore, what we call reality is associated with the [[symbolic]] [[order]] or '[[social]] reality'. The real is the unknown that [[exists]] at the [[limit]] of this socio-symbolic [[universe]] and is in constant tension with it. The real is also a very paradoxical [[concept]]; it supports our [[social reality]] - the social world cannot [[exist]] without it - but it also undermines that reality. A further difficulty with understanding the real is that Lacan's conception of it changed radically throughout his career. We will follow the [[development]] of the real from the 1950s, when it remained a relatively underdeveloped concept, through the crucial period from 1964 to the early 1970s, when Lacan used the concept to reformulate his understanding of the [[relationship]] between the [[imaginary]] and [[the symbolic]], to his late [[work]], where the real is elevated to the central [[category]] of his [[thought]]. Through each [[phase]] of his teaching Lacan placed a different emphasis upon the real, although he also carried over the preceding definitions and functions. Hence, like many of Lacan's concepts, a consideration of the real forces us to reappraise and reformulate our previous understanding of his work. The real in late Lacan is inseparable from an understanding of the [[role]] of [[fantasy]], the [[objet]] [[petit a]] and [[jouissance]]. We will look at each of these important concepts in turn before illustrating the function of the real through Roland [[Barthes]]' exquisite final book Camera Lucida.
=The real is always in its place=
From the 1950s until the early 1960s Lacan's creative [[energy]] was focused on elaborating the role of the [[signifier]] and the [[symbolic order]]. In this period the real performed an important function within his [[system]], but it was relatively underdeveloped. Lacan used the term, the real, in his first published papers in the 1930s, but in these early [[texts]] it was essentially a [[philosophical]] concept designating 'absolute [[being]]' or 'being-[[in-itself]]'. Thus the real was conceptualized in opposition to [[the imaginary]] of the [[mirror]] phase. As 'being-in-itself', the real was beyond the realm of [[appearance]] and [[images]].
In the Poe [[seminar]] of 1954-5, however, the concept underwent a significant revision and it was elevated to one of the [[three]] [[orders]]. As 'that which remains in its [[place]]', the real was opposed to both [[The Imaginary|the imaginary ]] and [[The Symbolic|the symbolic]]. The relatively low status that Lacan accorded to the real at this time can be gauged from his account of it here as something that, like spat-out chewing gum in the street, remains glued to one's heel (Lacan 1988c [1956]: 40). During this early phase of his teaching, the real is described as '[[concrete]]' - it is an indivisible brute materiality that exists prior to [[symbolization]]. From a [[clinical]] perspective, the real is the brute pre-symbolic reality that always returns to its place in the [[form]] of a [[need]], such as hunger. The real is thus closely associated with the body prior to its symbolization, but it is important to keep in [[mind]] here that the real is the need that [[drives]] hunger not the object that [[satisfies]] it. When an [[infant]] feels hunger, this hunger can be temporarily [[satisfied]] through [[breast]] or bottle-feeding, but the breast and the bottle are the [[objects]] of hunger and in [[Lacanian]] [[psychoanalysis]] these objects are imaginary, as they can never fully [[satisfy]] the infant's [[demand]]. The real is the place from which that need originates and is pre-symbolic in the [[sense]] that we do not have any way of symbolizing it. We [[know]] that the real exists because we [[experience]] it and it enters [[discourse]] as a [[sign]] - the infant's crying, but the place from which it originates is beyond symbolization. The real, therefore, is not an object, a thing, but something that is [[repressed]] and functionsunconsciously, intruding into our symbolic reality in the form of need. The real is a kind of ubiquitous undifferentiated mass from which we must distinguish ourselves, as [[subjects]], through the process of symbolization. It is through the process of cancelling out, of symbolizing the real, that 'social reality' is created. In short, the real does not exist, as [[existence]] is a product of thought and [[language]] and the real precedes language. The real is 'that which resists symbolization absolutely'.
=The real as the limit of symbolization=
From 1964 onwards the real is transformed in Lacan's [[thinking]] and loses any connection with [[biology]] or need. The concept continues to retain its [[association]] with brute matter, but its predominant [[meaning]] in Lacan at this time is as that which is unsymbolizable. The real is that which is beyond the symbolic and the imaginary and [[acts]] as a limit to both. Above all the real is associated with the concept of [[trauma]].
In [[medicine]] a trauma is any kind of cut or wound, but we are probably much more familiar today with the [[idea]] of [[psychological]] trauma. For example, we hear and read a great deal in the [[media]] [[about]] [[traumatic]] events such as train crashes, wars or [[other]] human disasters. The effect of these events on the [[people]] [[present]] or just watching [[them]] is said to be traumatic and psychologically disturbing. To overcome these traumas sufferers usually require some form of counselling or [[therapy]]. The most common form of [[Psychological Trauma|psychological trauma ]] today is seen to be [[physical]] or [[sexual]] abuse, such as [[incest]]. For psychoanalysis, however, a trauma is not necessarily something that happens to a person 'in reality'. Instead, it is usually a [[psychical]] [[event]]. [[Psychic]] trauma arises from the confrontation between an [[external]] stimulus and the [[subject]]'s inability to [[understand]] and [[master]] these excitations. Most commonly such confrontations arise from a subject's premature [[encounter]] with [[sexuality]] and the inability to comprehend what is taking place. This event then leaves a psychological scar in [[The Subject|the subject]]'s [[unconscious]] that will resurface in later [[life]]. For [[Freud]], the [[notion]] of trauma is linked to the [[primal]] [[scene]], whereby a [[child]] has either a real or imaginary experience that it cannot comprehend. This inassimilable [[memory]] is forgotten and repressed until some later, perhaps insignificant, event brings it back to [[consciousness]].
The idea of trauma implies that there is a certain blockage or [[fixation]] in the process of signification. Trauma arrests the movement of symbolization and fixes the subject in an earlier phase of development. A memory, for example, is fixed in a person's mind causing them intense [[mental]] [[disturbance]] and [[suffering]] and no matter how they try to rationalize and express this memory, it keeps returning and [[repeating]] the suffering. What Lacan adds to the [[Freudian]] conception of trauma is the notion that trauma is real insofar as it remains unsymbolizable and is a permanent dislocation at the very heart of the subject. The experience of trauma also reveals how the real can never be completely absorbed into the symbolic, into social reality. No matter how often we try to put our [[pain]] and suffering into language, to [[symbolize]] it, there is always something [[left]] over. In other [[words]], there is always a residue that cannot be transformed through language. This [[excess]], this 'X' as Lacan will call it, is the real. As we will see, the real thus becomes associated with the [[death]] [[drive]] and jouissance, as Lacan increasingly emphasizes the [[impossibility]] of the encounter with the real. But first let us say something about how an object can not exist but at the same time profoundly [[affect]] our lives.
During the second phase of Lacan's teaching the real loses the sense of 'thingness' which his earlier conception had retained. In his seminar on the [[ethics]] of psychoanalysis (1959-60) Lacan sought to clarify Freud's definition of the unconscious and especially the question of what is repressed. For Freud there can be no unconscious without [[repression]], but what exactly is it that is repressed: words, images, [[feelings]]? This question has led to many disputes and is one [[reason]] why there are so many different [[schools]] of psychoanalysis. For Lacan, what is repressed is not images, words or emotions but something much more fundamental. Freud hit upon this when, in The [[Interpretation]] of [[Dreams]], he suggested that there was a hard impenetrable core of the [[dream]] - what he called the '[[navel]]' of the dream - that is beyond interpretation. What is repressed, argues Lacan, is this hard impenetrable core. There is always a core of the real that is [[missing]] from the symbolic and all other representations, images and [[signifiers]] are no more than attempts to fill this gap. In [[seminar VII]] Lacan [[identified]] this repressed element as the [[representative]] of the [[representation]], or das [[Ding]] (the Thing).
The Thing is the beyond of the [[signified]] - that which is unknowable in itself. It is something beyond symbolization, and therefore associated with the real, or as Lacan puts it, '[[the thing]] in its dumb reality' (1992 [1986]: 55). The Thing is a [[lost object]] that must be continually refound. However, it is more importantly an 'object that is nowhere articulated, it is a [[Lost Object|lost object]], but paradoxically an object that was never there in the first place to be lost' (1992 [1986]: 58). The Thing is 'the [[cause]] of the most fundamental human [[passion]]' (1992 [1986]: 97); it is the object-cause of [[desire]] and can only be constituted retrospectively. The Thing is 'objectively' [[speaking]] no-thing; it is only something in relation to the desire that constitutes it. After [[The Seminar|the seminar ]] of 1959-60 the concept of [[das Ding]] completely disappeared from Lacan's work and it was replaced in 1964 by the idea of the [[objet petit a]]. What is important to keep in mind here with respect to the real is that the Thing is no-thing and only becomes something through the [[desire of the subject]]. It is the desire to fill the emptiness or [[void]] at the core of [[subjectivity]] and the symbolic that creates the Thing, as opposed to the [[loss]] of some original Thing creating the desire to find it. In Chapter 4 we saw how Lacan designated this process as [[separation]]. In his later work Lacan supplemented the idea of separation with the notion of fantasy and what he described as [[traversing]] the [[fundamental fantasy]].
=Unconscious Fantasy=
# psychical reality, or the reality of unconscious wishes, that is, fantasy.
Freud's conception of psychical reality often means little more than the reality of our thoughts and personal world, but nonetheless it is as real as material reality. Fantasy exists in this realm of psychical reality. Laplanche and Pontalis distinguish two types of fantasy: original or [[primal fantasies]] and secondary fantasies. Secondary fantasy concerns daydreams and the reworking of ready-made scenarios, and are not my direct concern here. The original or primal fantasy on the other hand is a more [[complex]] affair. Original, primal, fantasies are universal and limited in number; the [[Oedipus]] complex, for example, functions in this way as a universal fantasy [[structure]]. [[Primal Fantasies|Primal fantasies ]] are not original in the sense that they are the origin of all subsequent fantasies, but rather they are fantasies of origins - the scene of fantastical origins that Freud elaborated in [[Totem]] and [[Taboo]] for [[instance]]. Primal fantasies set the pattern for a subject's later psychic life and in this sense are '[[structuring]]' rather than representing a fixed [[content]]. We will see how this structuring takes place in relation to sexual [[difference]] in Chapter 6.
Fantasy originates in 'auto-[[eroticism]]' and the [[hallucinatory]] [[satisfaction]] of the drive. 'In the [[absence]] of a real object', write Laplanche and Pontalis, 'the infant reproduces the experience of the original satisfaction in a hallucinated form' (1986 [[[1968]]]: 24). Thus, our most fundamental fantasies are linked to our very earliest experiences of the rise and [[resolution]] of desire. The important point here is the [[nature]] of the relationship between fantasy and desire; 'fantasy is not the object of [[desire,]] but its setting' (1986 [1968]: 26, my italics). Fantasy is the way in which subjects structure or organize their desire; it is the support of desire. In the previous chapter we saw how the subject is faced with the enigma of the desire of the Other and is [[forced]] to pose certain questions to itself, such as: 'What am I in the Other's desire?' Fantasy is a response to that question. It is through fantasy that we learn how to desire and we are constituted as [[desiring]] subjects. The [[space]] of fantasy, writes Žižek, 'functions as an empty surface, as a kind of [[screen]] for the [[projection]] of desires' (1992:8). We can clearly see here one reason why Lacanianism might be attractive to film studies. Fantasy is not the [[object of desire]], neither is it the desire for specific objects; it is the setting or the mise-en-scène of desire. The [[pleasure]] we derive from fantasy does not result from the [[achievement]] of its aim, its object, but rather from the staging of desire in the first place. The [[whole]] point of fantasy is that it should never be fulfilled or confused with reality. The crucial term that mediates between fantasy and the real is the objet petit a.
[T]he object is not part of the signifying [[chain]]; it is a '[[hole]]' in that chain. It is a hole in the field of representation, but it does not simply ruin representation. It mends it as it ruins it. It both produces a hole and is what comes to the place of lack to cover it over. (1996a: 151)
Like so many of Lacan's concepts, the [[paradox]] of desire is that it functions retrospectively. As with [[Das ding|das Ding]], the objet a is, 'objectively' speaking, [[nothing]]. It only exists as something in relation to the desire that brings it about. If you [[think]] about falling in love this will [[help]] you to understand what Lacan means. When you first fall in love you idealize the other person and feel perfect together. This is the imaginary [[dimension]] of being in love. There is also the symbolic dimension of being 'a couple' and of being in a relationship with [[another]] subject who is lacking. But there is also something more; your new partner may be beautiful, intelligent, funny, a great dancer but then so is everyone else. So what is it that makes your new partner special? There is something elusive, something intangible, something extra about them and you cannot quite grasp or articulate it but you know it is there. That is why you love them. This is the objet a - the object-cause of your desire. The objet a then is at once the void, the gap, the lack around which the symbolic order is [[structured]] and that which comes to mask or cover over that lack. The 'Object (a) is the leftover of that process of constituting an object; the scrap that evades the grasp of symbolization' (Fink 1995:94). The objet a, in other words, is the left-over of the real; it is that which escapes symbolization and is beyond representation. In Lacanian [[terms]], fantasy defines a subject's '[[impossible]]' relation to the objet a.
=The Impossibility of the real and ''jouissance''=
It is this sense of the real as an impossible encounter that will dominate the final phase of Lacan's teaching in the 1970s. Indeed, he increasingly comes to see the whole experience of psychoanalysis as circling around this impossible [[traumatic encounter]]. In this phase the key [[distinction]] Lacan makes is not between ego and subject, imaginary and symbolic, or even between [[alienation]] and separation, but between the real and reality. Lacan's elaboration of fantasy as the support for reality serves to operate as a [[defence]] against the intrusion of the real into our everyday experience. Lacan called this process '[[traversing the fantasy]]'. [[Traversing the Fantasy|Traversing the fantasy ]] involves the subject subjectifying the trauma of the real. In other words, the subject takes the traumatic event upon him/herself and assumes [[responsibility]] for that jouissance. Jouissance is a very complicated notion in Lacan and not directly translatable into [[English]]. The term is usually translated as '[[enjoyment]]' but, as we will see, it involves a combination of pleasure and pain, or, more accurately, pleasure in pain. Jouissance expresses that paradoxical [[situation]] where [[patients]] appear to [[enjoy]] their own [[illness]] or [[symptom]]. In [[French]] the [[word]] also has sexual connotations and is associated with sexual pleasure. The example of jouissance that Lacan usually provides, however, is of [[religious]] or mystical ecstatic experience.
Although Lacan used the term jouissance as early as 1953, it only became a prominent concept in his work in the 1960s, when it was associated with the drive and the real. In Beyond the Pleasure [[Principle]] (1984b [1920]) Freud was forced to revise his earlier [[theory]] of the drives that asserted the primacy of [[pleasure principle]], that is to say, the theory that our primary motivation as human beings is the fulfilment of pleasure or desire. Clinical experience revealed to Freud that subjects compulsively repeated painful or traumatic experiences in direct [[contradiction]] to the primacy of the [[Pleasure Principle|pleasure principle]]. Freud called this beyond of pleasure 'the [[death drive]]' and suggested that the primary [[purpose]] of life is to find the correct path to death. Lacan followed Freud in associating the [[Death Drive|death drive ]] with [[repetition]], but he argued that we are not driven towards death but by death. It is loss that drives life through desire but, as Ellie Ragland-Sullivan puts it, human beings will settle for any experience, however painful, rather than fall out of the familiarity of the symbolic into the trauma and void of the real (1995:94). Ragland-Sullivan describes jouissance as 'the [[essence]] or quality that gives one's life its [[value]]' (1995:88). Contrary to desire which moves from one signifier to another constantly trying to satisfy itself, jouissance is absolute and certain ([[remember]] that the primary and defining characteristic of all drives is the consistency of pressure). Thus, Lacan opposed jouissance to desire and suggested that desire seeks satisfaction in the consistency of jouissance. Whether we like it or not the symbolic is governed by the death drive. Death is the beyond of pleasure, the inaccessible, the [[forbidden]] - the ultimate limit that cannot be overcome; and this ultimate limit is also related to jouissance.
The difficulty with talking about jouissance is that we cannot actually say what it is. We experience it rather through its absence or insufficiency. As subjects we are driven by [[insatiable]] desires. As we seek to realize our desires we will inevitably be disappointed - the satisfaction we achieve is never quite enough; we always have the sense that there is something more, something we have missed out on, something more we could have had. This something more that would satisfy and fulfil us beyond the meagre pleasure we experience is jouissance. We do not know what it is but assume that it must be there because we are constantly dissatisfied. As Fink puts it, eventually 'we think that there must be something better, we say that there must be something better, we believe that there must be something better' (2002:35) to such an extent that we give it consistency; we retrospectively turn nothing into something. Furthermore, in assuming that it is there and that we are lacking it we generally attribute it to the Other. The Other is believed to experience a level of enjoyment beyond our own experience. The important point here is that this unfailing jouissance does not exist:
