ABSTRACT
From the prohibition of the graven image to Lyotard's stress on the 'sign of history', the sublime has always, in some way, wavered in its relation with the material. This chapter looks in detail at the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's contribution to the debate. It shows that Lacan's relations with philosophical materialism and indeed with the discourse of religion are by no means simple and there may even be a case for regarding Lacanian psychoanalysis as a form of negative theology. As Lacan suggests throughout his teaching that which is 'nonsensical', including the discourse of religion, may well make sense when judged from the perspective of the sublime. Lacan's discourse on the sublime is picked up later in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis in a detailed reading of Antigone. The chapter focuses on Zizek's most widely known book, The SublimeObject of Ideology.
