ABSTRACT
I’ll continue with the exploration of Lacan’s focus on this notion of desire and linger a while on this theme in my examination of the series of the not so “human” effects of the unconscious, the very ones that generate the horror of knowledge. When we talk about the drive, its divergence regarding norms and the other is obvious. Similarly, for the symptom of jouissance, we understand immediately the necessity of regulating these jouissances in order to make them more compatible with the social link. But for desire it’s more complex because if, as an effect of language, it is that which is proper to the one who speaks, it is itself a “defence against jouissance”, a sort of generic defence rather than a subjective one, and so we can ask ourselves whether or not it curbs jouissance, whether or not it is a principle of humanisation. In my inquiry here, I have taken as navigational beacons the contrast between the two expressions: the “tragedy of desire” in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis and “the destructivity of desire” at the end of Transference .
