Lacan's 'objet a' | Todd McGowan

This Lacan in Scotland seminar "'How the 'Objet a' Takes the Object Out of Desire" took place on Zoom on Thursday 23 February 2023. Dr Todd McGowan discusses French psychoanalyst's Jacques Lacan's concept of 'objet a' in relation to desire. It is chaired by Dr Calum Neill (Director of Lacan in Scotland) and is followed by a discussion with the audience.
VIDEO TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
01:26 - Presentation
44:07 - Discussion with Calum Neill
49:38 - Q&A with the audience
DESCRIPTION OF THE SEMINAR
Jacques Lacan once claimed that the objet a was his one invention. It certainly indicates his originality as a thinker. This talk will trace the development of this concept and investigate how it enables him to think desire in a way that goes beyond both Hegel and Freud, two of the paradigmatic theorists of desire before Lacan. The objet a dissociates desire from satisfaction through obtaining an object and instead links desire’s satisfaction to the obstacle that forms around its object.
TODD MCGOWAN is professor of film studies at the University of Vermont. His previous Columbia University Press books are The Impossible David Lynch (2007), Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (2016), and Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (2019). He is the coeditor of the Diaeresis series at Northwestern University Press with Slavoj Žižek and Adrian Johnston.
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Пікірлер: 23

  • @TheDangerousMaybe
    @TheDangerousMaybe Жыл бұрын

    Todd explaining the concept of objet petit a? Yes, please!

  • @addammadd
    @addammadd Жыл бұрын

    14:22 you know when you mention a stain, it makes me think literally of the function of staining in microscopy which simultaneously distorts the image but in so doing brings the necessary contrast to actually view it.

  • @cameronrobson1218
    @cameronrobson12187 ай бұрын

    todd mcgowan's insights about how lacan was an asshole for writing the ecrits are so valuable, wish i'd heard of him years ago

  • @nightoftheworld
    @nightoftheworld11 ай бұрын

    10:35 so in the young Christian dating scene-could the “chaperone” (the one who stands as barrier to fuller relationship) be considered objet a? The chaperone generating desire through staining/marking what could otherwise be the “perfect” date.. young lovers desiring each other through the bar of the chaperone.

  • @anthony19723

    @anthony19723

    Ай бұрын

    Yes, I think you are on to something interesting. See Henry Kreps Fetish An Erotics of Culture describing the chaperone as objet a. The figure is always at work in English literature from Sheridan to Austen to Forster's A Room with a View (1908) Charlotte Bartlett always blocking and yet making the desired object Lucy Honeychurch appear better. The chaperone is also often challenged, which makes the narrative more enticing.

  • @blablabla63923
    @blablabla63923 Жыл бұрын

    and that floating sardine can also sees me all the same, a blind gaze that is some kind of nothing

  • @JohnnyMinotaur
    @JohnnyMinotaur Жыл бұрын

    Re: Todd's answer about the singularity of the objet a in film. He tries to hang on to 'singularity' by tying it to the viewer that the film 'constructs' but I think that's a misuse of 'singularity'. Whereas what he's talking about (the potential to encounter the formal frame of the objet a given the viewer position that the film constructs) would seem better described as *particular.* ... & so ... I think that Calum's opening question was never really answered.

  • @maxwelllegere1483

    @maxwelllegere1483

    3 ай бұрын

    lol

  • @dextercool
    @dextercool4 ай бұрын

    If only Lacan had been so pellucid.

  • @parkinglotsofhell
    @parkinglotsofhell5 ай бұрын

    Bible did it first: “Now we see as in a mirror dimly then Face-to-face”

  • @christianrokicki
    @christianrokicki Жыл бұрын

    is he implying that lacan's anus was too short at the start? is that 'it' or da ding ? fort-da ding dong? please help me to grasp it. this is the second time i hear that joke and still no cigar...

  • @christianrokicki

    @christianrokicki

    Жыл бұрын

    @Chaim Mendel you sound like the head honcho. or could be if you play yr cards right.

  • @OH-pc5jx

    @OH-pc5jx

    Жыл бұрын

    the short session, rather than a variable psychoanalytic session, refers to a brief session of sexual intercourse, due to premature ejaculation

  • @christianrokicki

    @christianrokicki

    Жыл бұрын

    @@OH-pc5jx yeah but why tell the joke a second time (probably more...elsewhere: circles where i have no entree?) when it is such a lumpen joke (pure drek) to begin with? i feel it must be a parapraxis of some sort or an example of repetition compulsion which is caused by a psychic split... and then to compound the sorrow his elaboration of the concept in question is utterly unsatisfactory. motoric sophistry has no place in the clinic. and i am tired which doesn't make life any easier as well... so it comes at a bad time.

  • @clydechristopher7797

    @clydechristopher7797

    Жыл бұрын

    ​​@@christianrokicki 😂 Holy shit. Is this an actual adult?

  • @clydechristopher7797

    @clydechristopher7797

    Жыл бұрын

    If you're the person in that profile pic then your comment is a huge breakthrough for the study of Benjamin buttons disease.