The Desire of Knowledge Is Not What You Want

The keyword in the title of this often overlooked essay in Écrits is “subject.” No surprise there! But notice how Lacan presents the subject at essay’s end:

Why and how the subject functions “a joint” — and not just any joint, but a joint between “the consequences of language and the desire for knowledge” — are the primary questions in part two of our podcast "On the Subject Who is Finally in Question."

Along the way, we define subjects as symptoms as signifiers apart from signs and representational logics, with identity formations in the digital age as touchstones throughout. Lo! the networked self of late-modernity! Which is not the same, of course, as somebody sitting on a toilet. More like a dictionary shot through with desire. Or so this episode suggests.

You’ll also hear one-line definitions of objet a, castration, holding environments, and the sinthome, along with shoutouts to Heidegger and Norbert Elias, a two-minute crash course on consumer logics of desire, another round of truths detoured in knowledge, and a final word on those bloody velvet shirts stuck to our skin.

Stay tuned for two more episodes next week. “Variations on the Standard Treatment,” here we come!

And I look forward to seeing y’all live and in-person (at least via Zoom) on Wednesday, the 28th, for our opening session on THE DRIVE! Link below for all the key details.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com