On the Absolute Impossibility of the World’s Existence

Lacan Against the Cosmologists

Abstract

This essay argues that the contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis and Joan Copjec’s Read My Desire can be derived from Sigmund Freud’s consistent rejection of the program of the “re-enchantment of the world.” Facing the onslaught of technological modernity, many of Freud’s contemporaries lamented the disenchantment of the world. Today, this tradition persists as a renewed desire for a shared or common world; we collectively mourn the loss of the world. But, in this context, Copjec’s work raises a disturbing question: can a sexed being have a world? In order to draw out some of the consequences of this question, the essay examines the role Immanuel Kant’s philosophy plays in Read My Desire in two steps: first, it addresses the theoretical argument against the existence of the world, and second, it examines some of the practical consequences of this insight. By providing a parallel reading of Kant’s reflections on the antinomies of cosmological ideas and Jacques Lacan’s formulae of sexuation, Copjec effectively establishes the fact that “the world” and “sex” are mutually exclusive categories.