ABSTRACT
In this response to John Panteleimon Manoussakis’ “The place of das Ding”, I unfold the significance of Heidegger’s analysis of das Ding as gift for psychoanalysis. We find a similar connection in Lacan’s writings. However, this is not a welcomed gift but an excremental remainder of the real. As the pure excess of life itself, this gift resists incorporation into the economy of symbolic exchange until it conforms to the law of the Other whereby the gift is sacrificed in exchange for becoming subject. Using the examples of the undocumented immigrant described by Jean-Luc Marion in Negative Certainties and the character from the story La Giara, described in Manoussakis’ text, I consider the corrosive and alienating effects of economizing the gift.
