Prisoners of the Inexistent Other

Abstract

Beginning with a discussion on an enigmatic remark: »I do not say ‘politics is the unconscious’ but simply ‘the unconscious is politics’«, taken from Lacan's seminar “The Logic of Fantasy”, this paper examines a conceptual shift in the articulation of the relation between the subject and the Other in the field of politics. From this perspective, the author takes as her departure point a distinction between a demand at the level of having, a want-to-have, a demand which is alienating in so far as it confirms the Other, and a demand at the level of being, a want-to-be, a demand which is separating since it brings the Other into question. Based on this analysis, the author shows how, in an epoch of the Other which does not exist, characterized by the hegemony of the capitalist discourse, only an act in which its consequences are inscribed in its very structure, constitutes a way out of a discourse that knows no closure, and such precisely to the extent to which this act is capable of bringing about a modification of both the status of the subject as well as that of the Other.