ABSTRACT
Richard Boothby is right to emphasise the Janus-like structure of a fantasy: a fantasy is simultaneously pacifying, disarming and shattering, disturbing, inassimilable into our reality. To "traverse the fantasy" therefore paradoxically means fully identifying oneself with the fantasy—namely with the fantasy which structures the excess resisting our immersion into daily reality, or, to quote a succinct formulation by Boothby. The culmination of Sarah Herbold's logic is undoubtedly the following reference to Judith Butler: "Butler points out that Zizek explicitly adopts the stance of a vigilant defender of the integrity and primacy of Lacanian theory against rival critical perspectives on subjectivity such as those of Foucault, feminists, and poststructuralists. Butler also observes that 'if the law of Lacanian theory is in need of protection from the threat it is already in a crisis that no amount of protection can overcome'".
