ABSTRACT
In one of his later seminars, looking back on a life’s work devoted to ‘a return to Freud’, Lacan considers object a as something he invented (Lacan 1973–74: lesson of 9 April 1974). Despite Lacan’s repeated statements (e.g. 1981 [1980]) that one should consider him as a Freudian and that his structuralist reading of Freud is thoroughly based in and on the work of the Viennese psychoanalyst, with the addition of object a something novel was introduced into this mere ‘return to Freud’. Object a’s novelty raises at least three questions: where does it occur within Lacan’s work, why does he need to invent it, and how does the notion relate to other aspects of Lacan’s theory? These questions will be addressed in section one. In section two of this chapter we will examine the political dimension and implications of the notion.
