ABSTRACT
The later Lacan focuses more and more on the libidinal body, that is, on sexuality and the drive, which, ‘insofar as it represents sexuality in the unconscious, is never anything but a partial drive’ (Lacan 2006: 720). This (bodily) subject is separated from the objects of its partial drives, and is not just alienated because of the intersubjective character of the human world of language (cf. Laurent 1995: 30).
During a whole period of his theoretical elaboration, Lacan tries to prop up the life functions of desire. But once he distinguishes the drive from desire, a devaluation of desire occurs, as he emphasizes above all the ‘not’ on which desire is based. What then becomes essential, on the contrary, is the drive as an activity related to the lost object which produces jouissance, and secondly fantasy. Fantasy and drive move to the center of his theory.
(Miller 1996: 425) Separation poses an internal limit towards the possibilities of symbolically ‘appeasing’ desire. It also restricts the early Lacan’s ‘full speech’, wherein the subject is close to the truth of its desire and hence no longer alienated. But the drives don’t care about this kind of appeasement or integrity; they want satisfaction. Whereas ‘identification is the mode by which desire is satisfied … no identification can satisfy the drive’ (Miller 1996: 424). 1