Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities

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Tragic Transgression and Symbolic Re-Inscription

Lorenzo Chiesa

To cite this article: Lorenzo Chiesa (2006) Tragic Transgression and Symbolic Re-Inscription,
Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 11:2, 49-62, DOI: 10.1080/09697250601029192

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Published online: 02 Jan 2007.

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 ANGEL AK I
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume II number 2 august 2006

Feigning madness is one of the dimensions of

what we might call the strategy of the modern
hero.
Lacan, Le séminaire livre VI

I introduction
he purpose of this paper is to attempt to
T illustrate, in a non-technical and abridged
way, one of the most important notions in the late
work of Jacques Lacan: the traversal of the
fundamental fantasy. I achieve this by offering
two opposed readings of Lars von Trier’s film,
The Idiots.1 To be more precise, I provide an
introductory explanation of the main differences
between two conflicting readings of Lacan’s late
teachings, one of which is incomplete, if not
wrong, and the other correct, through two
antithetical though complementary readings of
the key final scene of The Idiots. Oddly enough,
an incorrect reading of this final scene provides
us with an approximation of a correct reading of
the final Lacan. A correct reading of the final
Lacan proposes that his ethical teachings cannot
be confined to a dimension that I would name
‘‘tragic transgression.’’ In contrast, it maintains
that the latter acquires its significance only
thanks to a subsequent ‘‘symbolic re-inscription.’’
It also recognises that the mistaken reading,
which advocates such a confinement, is undoubt-
edly encouraged by Lacan’s own ambiguities –
dictated primarily by his constant revising – and
even more by those of his interpreters. In other
words, the pertinence of the objection is
acknowledged.
Let me add that the recent debate between
Slavoj Žižek, who not without oscillations
attempts to disclose a Lacan beyond and opposed
lorenzo chiesa
TRAGIC
TRANSGRESSION
AND SYMBOLIC
RE-INSCRIPTION
lacan with lars von trier
to tragedy, and Bruno Bosteels, who mistakenly
understands Lacan as a thinker of nihilistic
destruction incapable of transforming negativity
into a new consistent order, epitomises the
relation between these two readings.2 Žižek’s
vehement – and, I would argue, substantially
correct – defence of Lacan’s actual position is
rendered particularly intricate by the fact that
Bosteels’ incorrect allegations are, I believe, to a
great extent dependent upon what Žižek had
previously attributed to a ‘‘transcendent’’ Lacan –
who is partly Žižek’s own creation.3 In an
admirable auto-da-fé contained in ‘‘Enjoyment
within the Limits of Reason Alone,’’ the very

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/06/020049^14 ß 2006 Taylor & Francis and the Editors of Angelaki
DOI: 10.1080/09697250601029192

49
 lacan with von trier
article in which he attacks Bosteels, Žižek himself
partially recognises this fact.4
II the impasse of tragic transgression
In what sense do Lacan’s own ambiguities and
reformulations encourage a mistaken reading of
the value that his psychoanalytic theory attributes
to tragedy? For the Lacan of Seminar VII, who
writes about Sophocles’ Antigone and openly
superimposes psychoanalysis and tragedy,5 tragic
transgression simultaneously promotes the ethical
act par excellence and achieves a quasi-mystical
aesthetic enlightenment. Antigone does not
‘‘compromise her desire’’ and thus embodies
the first ethical law of psychoanalysis while, in
parallel, being attracted to and invested by a
horribly beautiful image, an ‘‘unbearable splen-
dour,’’6 which, Lacan says, ‘‘is at the centre of
tragedy.’’7 In tragedy, Lacan adds, referring to
the himeros enargès evoked by Antigone’s
chorus, ‘‘desire [is] rendered visible.’’8 The
space of tragedy is therefore the aesthetic space
in which the void of desire that is both a
limitation and a presupposition of the Symbolic –
the linguistic and social structure in which every
human being is alienated even before his birth
and after his death – discloses itself. This void
is here substantialised by Lacan.
We are thus able to formulate two general and
overlapping theses regarding the ethics of psycho-
analysis as expounded in Seminar VII: 1) it
should oppose the potential obliteration of the
void of desire, the real lack in the Symbolic which
is consubstantial with the Symbolic as such;9
2) it is inextricable from a psychoanalytical aes-
thetics aimed at temporarily disclosing such a
void beyond the dimension of imaginary spec-
ularity. I therefore agree with Marc De Kesel
when he suggests that, for Lacan, Sophocles’
heroine is first and foremost a beautiful ‘‘image,’’
an image of beauty.10 She is, strictly speaking, a
representation of lack: for this reason, one could
well argue that, in the instant before vanishing,
she literally embodies the ‘‘object-cause’’11 of
desire. On the one hand, the good dictated by
specular narcissism constitutes the first barrier
that separates us from pure desire, from its void.
On this level, I want the good of others, but this
good must be in the image of my own: ‘‘My
egoism is quite content with a certain altruism,’’
and thus ‘‘I can avoid taking up the problem of
the evil I desire and that my neighbour also
desires.’’12 On the other hand, the beauty of the
phantasmatic object, the object of the uncon-
scious, should be located at a second barrier.13
On this level, ‘‘the beam of desire’’ is
‘‘redoubled’’;14 in other words, it is both
‘‘tempered’’ by the effect of beauty and incapable
of being ‘‘completely extinguished by the
apprehension of beauty,’’ which is to say, it
carries on even where ‘‘there is no longer any
object.’’15
Having said this, in opposition to De Kesel, I
believe that Antigone as an image of lack is also
inevitably understood by Lacan as a model for the
ethics of psychoanalysis articulated in Seminar
VII. This can easily be demonstrated by means
of a simple syllogism. We are told that Antigone
represents the ‘‘essence of tragedy’’;16 we are also
told that ‘‘tragedy is at the root of our [psycho-
analytic] experience’’;17 hence (the suicidal
nature of) Antigone’s act is at the root of
Lacanian psychoanalysis. An aesthetic ethics
cannot be reduced to an aesthetics: the centrality
of the image of Antigone can be extracted only
from Antigone’s own act. This of course does not
imply that Lacan is content with locating suicide
at the centre of his ethics: on the contrary, he is
certainly aware of this impasse. From what we
have just seen, we may well agree with him when
he states that ‘‘Antigone hanging in her tomb
evokes something very different from an act of
suicide.’’18 Nonetheless, the fact remains that
Antigone’s ethical act, a precondition for
desire’s being made visible, is followed by her
hanging . . . . Quite simply, at this stage, Lacan
cannot find a better ‘‘image’’ for his ethics, which
would, after having represented the representa-
tion of lack, represent the moment of symbolic
re-inscription, instead of encouraging an irrevoc-
able disappearance into the unrepresentable
lack itself.19
For a later Lacan, whom we could locate by
means of his pronouncements in the Seminars of
the late-1960s and 1970s, the explicit formulation
of a moment of symbolic re-inscription becomes
unavoidable. This is simultaneously both the
50

accomplishment of the ethical-aesthetic act
beyond a merely negative moment, its sublima-
tion, and the beginning of any possible politics.
The field of the political begins at the very point
where the purity of a destructively tragic ethics is
compromised. In other words, beyond but not
against his ‘‘do not compromise your desire!’’ the
final Lacan also asks us to compromise our desire
precisely in order to keep on desiring, that is, to
dwell in a properly functioning though totally re-
symbolised Symbolic. Lacan asks that we com-
promise after not having compromised, to limit
our non-compromised desire for the void in order
to impose a new way of desiring. This may explain
why, as early as Seminar XI, Lacan tells us that
‘‘the analyst’s desire is not a pure desire.’’20 In
other words, Lacan enjoins us to re-inscribe desire
politically in so far as the (ethical) moment of
symbolic re-inscription entails the establishment
of a different symbolic order. In Seminar XXIII,
Lacan is asked by a student: ‘‘Are you an
anarchist?’’; his lapidary, almost disdainful
answer is: ‘‘Obviously, I am not’’ . . .21
III how does the idiots end?
The plot of The Idiots (1998) is extremely simple.
The film follows a group of people from
Copenhagen who pretend to be retarded. They
share a house, in and outside which they engage
in fits of ‘‘spazzing.’’ Each person’s goal is to find
their ‘‘inner idiot,’’ devoid of inhibitions and thus
to confront the norms and taboos of middle-class
society. They take trips into town that evoke
bewilderment, confusion, and misplaced compas-
sion in bystanders. Following a chance encounter,
the protagonist, Karen – a working-class woman
who has recently lost her son and is appallingly
treated by her family – becomes involved with
the group. Little by little, Karen begins to
understand how these people spend their time
and, discovering their pretence, accuses them of
mocking something serious. But after overcoming
her initial reservations, she eventually partici-
pates in their activities. For the first time in her
life, Karen finds acceptance and understanding
with ‘‘the idiots.’’ In the end, as one critic notes:
‘‘The charade begins to wear thin as the members
of the group find their inner doubts instead of
51
chiesa
their inner idiots.’’22 As von Trier himself
remarks: ‘‘The group does not succeed. Maybe
it only works out for the lead, Karen, and that
might be the moral of the film.’’23
More precisely, what is it that ‘‘works out’’ for
Karen? The group finally breaks up when all the
idiots, one by one, fail to play the idiot before
people they know (relatives, employers,
students . . .). Karen is the only one who, when
she returns to her family, is able to behave like an
idiot. Von Trier does not, however, directly tell
us what happens to Karen after this acting out.
One possible reading would consider The
Idiots a paradigmatic film about the individual’s
separation from the existing Symbolic and the
successful traversal of the fundamental fantasy –
to be understood as our ideologically conditioned
unconscious alienation in the Symbolic.24 From
this vantage point, Karen succeeds precisely
where Lacan’s Antigone fails. Karen’s separation
is followed by integration into a new Symbolic.
Indeed, the film ends with the protagonist’s
walking out of her family house having played
the idiot in front of them; she seems ready to start
a new life . . .. In contrast, Antigone dies . . .. (In
opposition to Lacanian doxa, it is not important
to distinguish between symbolic and real death
here, given that the former is ultimately nothing
but the mythical representation of what the latter
never completely achieves: actual separation from
the Symbolic.) Karen successfully traverses her
fundamental fantasy in so far as her full
assumption of the lack (of sense and enjoyment)
which defines the Symbolic in both the particular
and the universal is followed by the re-symbolisa-
tion of the Symbolic. This re-symbolisation is
effectuated through the emergence of a subject
who is temporarily dis-alienated.
A second possible reading of The Idiots
interprets its finale in a much more pessimistic
way. In my opinion, this is how von Trier himself
implicitly suggests the film should be under-
stood. Karen does not achieve any symbolic
re-inscription: she either becomes a ‘‘real’’ idiot
or commits suicide. It is true that in the last
scene, Karen acts transgressively in front of her
relatives; however, throughout the film, we are
repeatedly confronted with short flash-forwards
in which, one by one, all the ‘‘fake’’ idiots face
 lacan with von trier
the camera and, with great composure, reply
to questions about Karen voiced by someone off
screen – possibly a social worker or a psy-
chiatrist . . .. It is thus intimated that Karen is
either ill or dead. I consequently propose that
The Idiots is yet another of von Trier’s films on
sacrifice. One should be reminded here that,
together with Breaking the Waves (1996) and
Dancer in the Dark (2000) – also centred on
tragic female figures – The Idiots partakes in
what von Trier defines as his ‘‘golden hearted
trilogy.’’ In the first two films – far less
convincing than The Idiots, I would argue – the
notion of sacrifice is indeed as kitsch as it is
self-evident.25
But what should make us suppose that Karen
sacrifices herself? My suggestion is that she
‘‘becomes’’ a real idiot – or she commits suicide
– in order to save the sense of the Other
retroactively, the sense of the group of fake
idiots who failed in their apparently transgressive
attempt, who did not even achieve actual separa-
tion, let alone symbolic re-inscription. This is
why, when talking about her with the social
worker, they are all gripped by a sudden nostalgia.
The message they articulate between the lines of
these dialogues is clear: ‘‘How happy, united
and transgressive we were when we lived
together! . . ..’’ And, most importantly: ‘‘Our
spazzing meant something! Too bad we took it
so seriously . . .. The fact that Karen really went
nuts is the undeniable proof that we really were
subversive . . ..’’ I suggest that the opposite is true:
if Karen had not sacrificed herself, the fake idiots
would have been obliged to admit that ‘‘spazzing’’
did not work at all. About two-thirds of the way
into The Idiots, at the precise moment when the
group starts to fall apart, it is as if Karen and her
friends suddenly exchange positions. She is now
the one who supports them: ‘‘You’ll see I can
show you it’s all been worthwhile,’’ Karen literally
says to the group just before they split up.
From this perspective, the character of Karen
repeats the tragic – and eminently regressive – act
of Tarkovsky’s heroes, especially that of the
protagonist of The Sacrifice (1986).26 Do not
‘‘mirror,’’ ‘‘nostalgia,’’ and ‘‘sacrifice’’ represent
an anti-Lacanian triad par excellence? The ethical
message of The Sacrifice could not be more
evident: ‘‘I sacrifice myself to save the Other from
nuclear catastrophe.’’ Note that this Other is, as it
were, the biggest of all possible big Others. It is the
social Symbolic as such, the human being qua
being of language (what Lacan names parlêtre),
that is saved from the imminent threat of the
realest of Reals: the atomic bomb. In other words,
what the protagonist of The Sacrifice perversely
saves us from is the awareness that the biggest lack
(of sense) in the Symbolic, the realest of Reals, lies
precisely in the fact that the Symbolic can quickly,
almost instantaneously, wipe itself out with a
couple of atomic bombs! (In a surprisingly
pertinent interview, von Trier himself tells us: ‘‘I
was very much afraid of the atom bomb. Every
single night before I went to sleep I would engage
in a mass of rituals to save the world . . ..’’)27 For
the final Lacan, the Real can only be a Real-
of-the-Symbolic, a void within it that is real only in
and for the Symbolic. Envisaging any sort of pure
Real beyond the Symbolic, even in the form of a
‘‘positive absence’’28 which would exist per se and
be reached by means of so-called symbolic death, is
a profound mistake that leads both to the ethical
impasse of Lacan’s Antigone and to the incorrect,
tragic readings of Lacan by those who have not
acknowledged that he overcame Antigone.
IV the logic of sacrifice and its
‘‘transvaluation’’
Karen, just like Tarkovsky’s heroes, is a Christ-like
figure, a perfect exemplification of the agnus dei
that redeems us from peccata mundi. To sacrifice
oneself is directly opposed to traversing the
fundamental fantasy. The sacrifice is the closest
one can get to evil, according to Lacanian ethics:
the sacrifice is the epitome of perversion to be
understood as the specific psychic and social
structure in which the subject refuses to acknowl-
edge the lack in the Symbolic (particular and
universal). However, we should now endeavour to
distinguish between three kinds of sacrifice:
(a) sacrificing oneself for the
symbolic other
I kill myself to show you that there is an
underlying sense, while in fact such a sense is
52

created retroactively by my sacrifice. This is
Karen’s perverse position. What Karen cannot
accept is the lack in the Other.29
(b) sacrificing oneself against the
symbolic other
I kill myself to show you that there is no sense at
all; my own disappearance must emphasise, once
and for all, a transcendent Lack (of sense and
enjoyment). This position, exemplified by
Lacan’s Antigone, is properly tragic and
suicidal.30 For a more contemporary example,
we might think of François Ozon’s film Under the
Sand (2001): I apply some sun-cream to my
partner’s back, I tell her I am going for a swim
and quietly drown myself without anyone noti-
cing. In addition, in the case in question, I make
my partner suspect I committed suicide without
ever letting her definitively prove that it was not
an accident . . .. One should be able to grasp how
this position is also supremely hysterical: for the
last Lacan, suicidal tragedy is nothing but
radicalised hysteria. By merely pointing out the
lack in the symbolic Other, by continuously
reproaching the Other for its lack, impotence,
meaninglessness, being not-whole, the hysteric
(and, a fortiori, the suicide) is clearly far from
undermining it. We could therefore suggest that
hysterical and tragic figures alike are, in the end,
actually more perverse than perverts,31 which
means that any sacrifice against the Other
inevitably turns out to be a sacrifice for the
Other.32 As Lacan himself points out, the desire
for suicide which is apparently a desire to have
done with the Symbolic actually conceals a desire
to be recognised by the Other as a person who has
committed suicide . . .. From this, of course, it
follows that ‘‘the more a subject affirms through
the signifier that he wants to exit the signifying
chain, the more he enters into it and becomes a
part of it.’’33 In other words, the hysteric seems to
want to alter the existing Symbolic, while in fact
his own discourse, his being in the Symbolic,
depends precisely on preserving the evidence of
the lack inherent to the existing Symbolic. The
hysteric’s paradoxical S1/Master-Signifier is the
barred subject. Consequently, hysteria and suici-
dal tragedy, to different degrees, reify the lack.
53
chiesa
This specification should throw fresh light on
the reason why Lacan mocks the events of May
1968. According to him, the alleged revolutionary
students are nothing but a bunch of hysterics who
want a Master. This statement is usually wrongly
interpreted: Bosteels, for example, writes that
Lacan accuses May 1968 of being ‘‘an hysterical
outburst in search of a new master.’’34 In other
words, Lacan mocks the students because he is
opposed to any non-destructive revolution, any
symbolic re-inscription, because ‘‘he stops half-
way,’’ at the negative moment. However, what
Bosteels completely misses out is the fact that
‘‘hysteria’’ and ‘‘new master’’ are, per se,
completely incompatible terms for Lacan’s
theory of discourses.35 Lacan mocks the students’
hysteria because they want to preserve the specific
Master that is the lack inherent in the existing
Master: consequently, they are not really enga-
ging in any revolution that would promote a new
Master in place of the old. The fact that the
discourse of the Master is, for Lacan, the
‘‘reverse’’ of the discourse of the analyst is
perfectly compatible with the fact that the aim of
the discourse of the analyst is precisely that of
paving the way for a new Master.
Thus, in Seminar XVII, Lacan states the
following: ‘‘Nobody has ever observed how it is
rather curious that the discourse of the analyst
produces nothing but the discourse of the
master.’’ Only analysis can make the hysterical
subject extract a new Master (signifier). It is in
this sense that Lacan affirms that the analysand
must be provisionally hystericised but need not
become a tragic figure. Lacan also observes that
‘‘the revolutionary aspiration has only one
possibility, that of bringing us to the discourse
of the master. This is what past experience proves
to us.’’36 I am inclined to interpret these two
quotations together. One could thus articulate the
following syllogism: if a) analysis produces a new
master and b) revolution should aspire to bring
about a new master, then c) psychoanalysis and
true revolution must have something in common.
Far from mocking the students for being
revolutionary, Lacan is on the contrary claiming
that they are not revolutionary enough!
(Furthermore, note how the hysterical search
for the master which is the lack inherent in the
 lacan with von trier
master overlaps perfectly with the ‘‘bring-the-
attack-to-the-heart-of-the-State’’ strategy that
characterised many of the urban guerrilla move-
ments operative in Europe in the 1970s – and
which can be considered as an offshoot of May
1968. . .. According to the Red Brigades, for
example, the Italian state could be overthrown in
a relatively easy fashion since it had been found
to be ‘‘lacking’’! This is a perfectly hysterical
discovery; it locates itself at the antipodes of
the necessary political assumption that every
State/S1 is, as such, always already nothing but
a stand-in for the lack in the Symbolic.)
(c) sacrificing one’s own sacrifice
Here, sacrifice transvaluates itself and supports
the subtractive moment of the traversal of the
fundamental fantasy.37 This is proper separation
from the Symbolic in so far as it is only on this
basis that the Symbolic can subsequently be
re-symbolised in a completely new way. In other
words, the authenticity of this form of separation
is due to the fact that it does not claim to separate
itself permanently from the Symbolic as such; it
realises that this alleged purity, symbolic death,
is actually impossible, a mythical mirage which
ultimately sustains the existing symbolic
order . . .. The subtractive time of the traversal
of the fundamental fantasy is, for Lacan, the time
of revolution, which can never be achieved
through tragedy, let alone perversion. Indeed,
the first two kinds of sacrifice achieve self-
annihilation without undermining the existing
Symbolic, they are destructive without being
subtractive, no actual separation being achieved.
In revolution, on the other hand, one sacrifices
one’s own sacrifice (i.e., alienation) precisely by
sacrificing the existing big Other. Revolution is a
temporary break that can entail violence: this
violence, if it arises, should be endorsed since it is
the precondition of any radically new symbolic
re-inscription. This violence is, however, the
antithesis of an ‘‘arch-political act [. . .] that calls
upon the annihilation of the entire symbolic
order,’’38 which Bosteels rightly condemns but
wrongly associates with Lacanian ethics. The
revolutionary break and, in parallel, the traversal
of the fundamental fantasy are, at the same time,
both radical and relative: after having traversed
the fundamental fantasy, a new fundamental
fantasy emerges which will in turn need to be
traversed. The radicality of the traversal stands
on the side of an increasingly subjectivised
repetition: the interminability of analysis must
be read together with the perpetual character of
revolution.39
I believe that the position in which one
sacrifices one’s own sacrifice is brilliantly exem-
plified by the protagonist of Dogville, von Trier’s
last but one film. Initially, we see how the
protagonist’s tragic ‘‘No!’’ to her Father, a
gangster,40 and his life-style – which echoes
Antigone’s ‘‘No!’’ to Creon – unexpectedly goes
hand in hand with her becoming the sacrificial
object of the Other, the town of Dogville.41
Indeed, from the moment at which she is given
shelter by the community of Dogville in order to
escape her father’s supposed revenge, the prota-
gonist gradually identifies with the means of the
enjoyment of the Other, helping out with her
hosts’ jobs, working as their slave, and finally – in
an increasingly explicit sado-masochistic scenario
– satisfying their sexual necessities while being
chained up like a dog. Grace, the protagonist,
traverses her fundamental fantasy only later on
when she sacrifices her own sacrificial fantasy in
which she is the object of the Other’s enjoyment,
precisely by exterminating all the inhabitants of
Dogville (the moment of subtraction) and by
establishing a new Master-Signifier (the moment
of symbolic re-inscription which Grace herself
describes as ‘‘assuming power’’). Thus, she
becomes an at least partially emancipated,
subjectivised individual. It would therefore be
completely wrong to think that she has sacrificed
Dogville for her Father, and that she eventually
returns to his tutelage. In other words, Dogville
shows us how the most fundamental fantasy is, in
the end, the one in which the tragic fantasy of an
inflexible ‘‘No!’’ to the existing Father/Master/
Other becomes indistinguishable from the per-
verse fantasy in which the subject sacrifices
himself for an allegedly alternative Other. Are
these not the two components of Karen’s
fundamental fantasy? Grace could be said to
both share and successfully traverse Karen’s
fundamental fantasy.
54

V pure desire and its political
re-inscription
According to Lacan, in order to desire the lack
that (the) desire (of the Other) is, desire has to
remain fundamentally unsatisfied, it has to
continue to desire, to desire desire. This elucida-
tion is needed in order to answer, or at least to
problematise further, a legitimate objection: if
the real object of desire – or, more precisely, the
real ‘‘object-cause’’ of desire – is nothing but the
desire of the Other qua lack, why can the subject
not desire it ‘‘directly’’? Why is it necessary to
keep on desiring the lack?
The fact is that it is possible to desire the lack
only in so far as it emerges as lack through the
retroactive reification of the imaginary ‘‘veil’’ in
the fundamental fantasy. The desire of the Other
cannot be desired directly, and so one repeats
one’s desire for it. What happens when the
subject faces it directly – which is the case in the
Oedipus complex as well as at the end of
psychoanalytic treatment when symbolic castra-
tion is ‘‘consciously’’ assumed by the subject?42
This is precisely what Lacan names ‘‘subjective
destitution.’’ Given that desire is, by definition,
the ‘‘essence’’ of the subject, we must also
conclude that subjective destitution, a radical
manifestation of desire, causes the termination
of desire at the same time. This is the paradox of
‘‘pure’’ desire.
Although Lacan acknowledges as early as
Seminar V that ‘‘desire is the desire of that lack
which designates in the Other another desire,’’43
he usually does not point out how such a
definition involves two opposite implications. If
desire is the desire of the Other qua desire of
lack, this could apply equally to desiring the
Other’s desire as the object of one’s fundamental
fantasy, which represents lack, and to the pure
desire of the Other’s desire as an irreducible lack,
as the pre-phantasmatic real void in the symbolic
order which generated the subject’s desire in
the first place. It is indeed the case that the
identification of the subject’s desire with the
Other’s desire (as ‘‘mitigated’’ void) on the level
of the ‘‘marionettes of fantasy’’ should not be
confused with another more ‘‘essential’’ level on
which, despite phantasmatisation, the desire of
55
chiesa
the Other remains unknown for the subject and
causes anxiety when it is encountered.44
From a slightly different standpoint, this
clarification should also allow us to see how the
subject’s desire of the Other’s desire in the
fundamental fantasy is still a desire for recogni-
tion, and consequently it is incorrect to relegate
the desire for recognition to the pseudo-Hegelian
notion of conscious desire that Lacan embraced in
the early 1950s. When Lacan says that desire is the
desire of the Other’s desire qua lack, this does not
necessarily exclude the possibility that this same
desire is also, at the same time, a desire for
unconscious recognition in the fundamental
fantasy: due to the complex nature of the
fundamental fantasy in which, paradoxically,
lack is represented, unconscious desire is both a
desire for lack and a desire to suture this lack. In so
far as lack is sutured in fantasy, the subject’s desire
as desire of the Other’s desire qua lack remains a
desire for (phantasised) recognition, which is to
say a desire to be desired or, better, loved by the
Other. The subject’s fundamental fantasy sutures
lack only in so far as the subject – barred by his
alienation in the symbolic order – is at the same
time an object, the object a of the Other’s desire
(in the subject’s fundamental fantasy).
To recapitulate, on the level of fantasy, the
subject’s desire is the Other’s desire and,
conversely, the Other’s desire is the subject’s
desire: hence 1) the subject’s desire is the object a
of the Other’s desire and, more importantly, 2)
the subject’s desire is ultimately the desire to be
the object a, the means of enjoyment of the
Other’s desire. On the contrary, pure desire
desires ‘‘that which desires’’ [le désirant] in the
Other, the real alterity of the Other which lies
beyond the phantasmatic veil of unconscious
recognition. All this can be reformulated by
saying that the subject’s desire of the Other as
desire for the Other’s desire qua lack is nothing
but the desire for the Other as the desire to
reproduce desire; one can continue to desire the
Other’s desire qua lack only if one continues to
reproduce one’s desire in the fundamental
fantasy. Any direct attempt to face the Other’s
desire conceived as a ‘‘raw lack’’ beyond fantasy
unleashes anxiety and, as we have seen, this could
entail the termination of desire.
 lacan with von trier
From a Lacanian perspective, what might
the political implications be of traversing the
fundamental fantasy by means of an encounter
with the ‘‘raw lack’’ in the Other? How can
we avoid the self-destructive termination of
desire from the moment we are encouraged to
‘‘purify’’ it? Conversely, what is to be gained
by its re-symbolisation and, most pertinently,
in what way does the increasingly subjecti-
vised repetition enacted by such a re-symbo-
lisation eventually promote a progressive
politics?
Jacques-Alain Miller reminds us that the late
Lacan often suggested that the end of psycho-
analytical treatment should be understood in
terms of a ‘‘getting by’’ with the symptom, a
‘‘know-how of the symptom.’’ He is then led to
the following question: ‘‘Does it [the know-how
of the symptom] entail the cessation of repetition
or a new manner of repetition?’’45 It must be
specified that, for Miller, both alternatives
exclude the fantasy a priori since he strangely
opposes enjoyment ‘‘conceived as repetition’’ to
enjoyment ‘‘conceived as fantasy.’’46 Even more
unexpectedly, he opposes the know-how of the
symptom to the traversal of the fantasy, the latter
being defined as a mere ‘‘transgression which is
put to work in analysis [. . .] an invitation to go in
the direction of the void and of the destitution of
the subject.’’47 I think that these sharp opposi-
tions are extremely dubious and insufficiently
argued for. For instance, it is astonishing that
Miller unhesitatingly proposes the assumption of
the (repeated or unrepeated) symptom as the end
of analysis without problematising the fact that
the symptom is by definition ideologised unless
subjective destitution occurs. However, I believe
that Miller’s question remains extremely interest-
ing if we reformulate it in the following way: after
the traversal of the fundamental fantasy – which
is a necessary precondition for a non-ideological
know-how of the symptom – does the subject
form a new fundamental fantasy? To ask the same
question in a different way: the specific term used
by Lacan to designate this ‘‘know-how of the
symptom’’ is the sinthome. Does the new way of
desiring brought about by the sinthome – which
should also be understood as an identification
with the symptom – include or exclude the
(necessarily repetitive movement of a new)
fundamental fantasy?
In my opinion, if the sinthome were to exclude
the formation of a (radically new) fundamental
fantasy, then it would be extremely difficult to
articulate its precise status exclusively on the
basis of Lacan’s own work. In this case, I do not
see how we could define it as something more
accurate than a (non-psychotic) overturning of
the relationship between the Symbolic and the
Real – in favour of the latter – an inverted
sublimation or, as Miller has it, ‘‘a Symbolic
[that] remains very real.’’48 Furthermore, what
should we say about the political consequences of
this new kind of symbolic identification? Bluntly
put, apart from their partial compromise with
the existing hegemonic Master-Signifier – James
Joyce, a perfect example of a successful sinthome,
certainly did not speak the way he wrote – how do
sinthomes communicate with each other if there
is no ‘‘common’’ phantasmatic background? Is
it not the case that a hypothetical society of
sinthomatic beings of language – as opposed to
‘‘phallic’’ beings of language – would inevitably
cause a fragmentation of the Symbolic into many
‘‘Symbolics’’ and ultimately its complete demise?
On the other hand, I propose that if the
sinthome were to include the formation of a new
fundamental fantasy and the ‘‘new manner of
repetition’’ to which Miller refers corresponded
to the emergence of a truly original fundamental
fantasy – the unavoidable counterpart of a
radically innovative Master-Signifier – then one
can discern the outline of a Lacanian politics.
Such a politics could deservedly claim to have
inherited the legacy of Lacan’s ethics of the real
lack, of sense and enjoyment, of jouis-sens and
jouis-sans. The analytical community is not per
se a political avant-garde, Lacanian psycho-
analysis does not promote any specific Master-
Signifier, but it is clearly meant to pave the way
for a new Master which is compatible with its
ethics.
Let me sketch out some important points
before concluding this section. In so far as the
symbolic structure is universal only through a
particular contingent Master-Signifier that
hegemonises fantasies, the subject’s encounter
with the real lack beneath his ideologised fantasy
56

forces him to assume the lack in the universal.
Conversely, the re-symbolisation of lack is there-
fore, by definition, always carried out at the level
of the particular. More precisely, in so far as this
is nothing but the specific moment at which the
subject realises that his singularity is necessary
for there to be universality, it is here that the
particular is turned into the individual. Joyce is
said to be ‘‘the individual’’ in so far as he
succeeds in subjectivising himself by (partially)
individualising the real lack in the Symbolic.49
Furthermore, according to Lacan, such an
emergence of the individual, the know-how of
or identification with the symptom, corresponds
to the operation by means of which the real lack
in the Symbolic is named by the subject.50 Thus,
at this critical stage, the subject can either:
(a) become his own name, develop his own
sinthome while co-existing with the hege-
monic Other. This solution inevitably
implies a certain compromise with the
‘‘senselessness’’ of the ruling universal, a
progressive diminishing of the awareness
that the universal depends on the individual;
such a ‘‘re-alienation’’ could be obviated
only by periodically undergoing a new
traversal of the fundamental fantasy through
psychoanalytical treatment. Yet, one soon
realises that this does not automatically
imply a neat separation of the ethical from
the political: bluntly put, an increase in the
number of people who undergo Lacanian
psychoanalytic treatment and ‘‘ethically’’
assume the inconsistency of the symbolic
order would undoubtedly increase the
chances of the success of a political force
which does not aim primarily at obliterating
lack . . .
(b) name a movement, promote a ‘‘new’’
Symbolic – re-symbolised through one’s
individual Master-Signifier/sinthome – and
struggle politically to establish its hege-
mony. This obviously presupposes (a) above:
Marx-ism presupposes that Marx first made
his own name à la Joyce . . .. It goes without
saying that such a direct politicisation of
jouis-sens/jouis-sans is compatible with
Lacanian psychoanalysis only if the
57
chiesa
fundamental fantasy it sets up is radically
new: in other words, a Master-Signifier is
progressive and consequently worth fighting
for only if it closely follows the temporary
assumption of the real lack in the Symbolic.
VI why does the idiots remain a
subversive film?
Interestingly enough, the article in which Žižek
replies to Bosteels’ allegations is the same article
in which he curtly dismisses The Idiots as ‘‘a
fundamentally ideological project.’’51 No doubt
this sort of attack is far from representing a new
stance for Žižek: on the other hand, what is
unusual is his accusing a film of being ideological
not because it is, as it were, politically correct but
because it is politically incorrect. . ..
In a long footnote, Žižek concludes that the
film’s final scene – with Karen returning to her
family and playing the idiot in front of them – is
the only one that ‘‘changes the whole perspec-
tive.’’ He then adds: ‘‘Here the same strategy
[i.e., spazzing] acquires a completely different
value: what was formerly fake imitation is now an
authentic gesture of resistance against patriarchal
family constraints.’’52 However, the question
Žižek does not ask himself is the following:
what is the price that Karen has to pay as a
consequence of her supposedly ‘‘authentic ges-
ture’’? And, more importantly: is it really
‘‘authentic’’? (This is precisely what I hope to
have refuted: this gesture appears to be
‘‘authentic’’ but it is not ‘‘authentic’’ at all. . ..)
On the other hand, no concession is granted by
Žižek to the fake idiots’ spazzing. Spazzing is
morally acceptable only in the case of Karen, who
really does go crazy. In other words, Žižek refuses
to accept the truly subversive potential of
playing the idiot, which does not get actualised
in what is ultimately the failed attempt of von
Trier’s idiots . . .. Thus, Žižek misses out a
fundamental dimension of Lacan’s own theory
(and life) while, once again, misleadingly over-
emphasising a tragic-all-too-tragic dimension of
the latter’s thought. For the late Lacan, playing
the idiot – being a conscious charlatan – or, more
precisely, rendering language more idiotic than it
already necessarily is, willingly exaggerating the
 lacan with von trier
presence of non-sense in language – and, in
general, in the Symbolic networks that language
creates – is one way in which to promote, literally
per absurdum, the acceptance of lack-in-sense.
In other words, despite acknowledging that, for
Lacan, ‘‘truth as such can speak [only] in the
mood of the fool’s discourse,’’53 Žižek does not
really grant him what, in a truly Lacanian mood,
Žižek seems to grant himself: that is, the difficult
role of the buffoon. Playing the idiot can be,
in potentia, profoundly ethical and even subver-
sively political. What else is Lacan suggesting
when, in Seminar XVII, he states the following:
‘‘[One should] give a sense to déconner [‘talking
rubbish’] and understand it as déchanter
[‘adopting a different tone,’ but also ‘to be
disillusioned,’ ‘to have one’s feet on the ground’].
I suppose you all know what a déchant [‘counter-
melody’] is; something that one writes in the
margins of a given chant or melody.’’54
To conclude, I think that despite its sacrificial
logic, The Idiots remains, on another level, a
truly dissident and strongly political film, and
consequently one whose novelty should not be
relegated to its – rather successful – attempt to
traverse certain cinematographic fantasies by
following the ‘‘Dogme’’ rules. Why? Recall here
the symptomatically outraged reactions that it
provoked by using, in one scene, people suffering
from Down syndrome. As von Trier states: ‘‘On
the surface [the film is] about our attitudes with
the mentally handicapped and how much we
‘appreciate’ them. At a deeper level it must
appear to be in defence of abnormality.’’55
I personally believe it is a film that uncovers
the – stricto sensu – perverse attitude of our
allegedly anti-discriminatory society towards
mentally and physically disabled people.
What does perversion mean here? Once again,
it means obliterating the lack. Disabled people
threaten to render lack visible, even by their very
presence; the non-disabled attempt in any way
possible to convince themselves that the disabled
do not lack anything. Therefore, it should no
longer surprise us that, for example: a) there is a
blind speed world record and b) as was recently
reported, it can even be smashed by an unsighted
driver – which means, as journalists unfailingly
specified, that there are also sighted drivers who
sometimes smash blind speed world records while
wearing a blindfold. This apparently anti-discri-
minatory stance is in the final analysis radically
opposed to any real acceptance of the disabled
qua disabled. Such a stance leads to further
paradoxes: for instance, if, on the one hand, it is
morally wrong to have those affected with Down
syndrome playing themselves qua disabled
(and not qua disabled Olympic champions) –
especially in a film in which non-disabled actors
pretend to be retarded – on the other hand, it
seems morally acceptable, if not exemplarily anti-
discriminatory, for a famous sportswear brand to
advertise its merchandise using non-disabled
models playing basketball in wheelchairs.
Finally, I believe that The Idiots confronts us
with the serious question of whether the
ideological motto ‘‘Disabled is – more or less
[but, note, never completely] –
normal’’56 is nothing but an
obscuration of the Real of the fact
that ‘‘Normal is already
disabled.’’57
notes
A preliminary version of parts of the present
article was originally delivered as a paper at
the 6th conference of the Society for European
Philosophy (University of Essex, 9^11 September
2003) I wish to express my gratitude to the
anonymous reviewer of a later draft of this
article for his comments. I must also thank
Michael Lewis for his proofreading.
1 Readers should be reminded here that the
notion of the ‘‘traversal of the fundamental fan-
tasy’’ was thematised explicitly by Jacques-Alain
Miller’s reading of Lacan, and later popularised by
Slavoj Z›iz›ek. In addition, I also want to specify
that, in this paper, I speak of a ‘‘final’’ or ‘‘late’’
Lacan to refer to a loose period of time ^ which
could itself easily be subdivided into other phases
^ covering Lacan’s production from the mid-1960s
onwards.
2 See B. Bosteels, ‘‘Alain Badiou’s Theory of the
Subject: The Re-Commencement of Dialectical
Materialism,’’ Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy
58

12^13 (2001^2002) especially 220 ^29 of volume 12
and 197^208 of volume 13; and S. Z›iz›ek,‘‘Foreword
to the Second Edition: Enjoyment within the
Limits of Reason Alone’’ in S. Z›iz›ek, For They
Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political
Factor (London: Verso, 2002) especially lxxxi ^
lxxxviii.
3 Two conclusions could be drawn: 1) there is a
tendency to read Z›iz› ek more than Lacan; 2) there
is a tendency to identify inappropriately Z›iz›ek’s
theses with Lacan’s own teachings.
4 For a more recent development of the way in
which Z›iz›ek has used his new anti-transcendent
reading of Lacan in a different context, see The
Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of
Christianity (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT
Press, 2003) 59^79.
5 See J. Lacan, The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of
Psychoanalysis, 1959^1960, trans. D. Porter
(London: Routledge, 1992) 243^ 44. As early as
1956, Lacan notes that psychoanalysis ‘‘is to be
situated in a tragic tradition’’ since, by ‘‘denying
any tendency towards progress,’’ its ‘‘inspiration
is fundamentally pessimistic.’’ Moreover, it is
‘‘fundamentally anti-humanist to the extent that
there is in humanism this romanticism that would
like to make the mind the flower of life’’; see
J. Lacan, The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses, 1955^
1956, trans. R.Grigg (London: Routledge,1993) 243.
6 The Seminar. Book VII 247.
7 Ibid. 247.
8 Ibid. 268. On these issues, see F. Regnault,
Confe¤rences d’esthe¤tique lacanienne (Paris: Seuil,
1997) 92.
9 I therefore agree with A. Zupanc›ic›, when she
claims that ‘‘an ethics of the Real is not an ethics
oriented towards the Real, but an attempt to
rethink ethics by recognizing and acknowledging
the dimension of the Real [. . .] as it is already
operative’’ (Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan [London:
Verso, 2001] 4, my emphases). However, Zupanc›ic›
herself progressively parts from this initial pro-
grammatic statement and overestimates Lacan’s
appreciation of and compatibility with Kantian
ethics: for Lacan himself, the latter is precisely an
ethics towards the Real.
10 M. De Kesel, ‘‘An Image, Not an Example:
Some Statements on Lacan’s Aesthetical Ethics,’’
unpublished paper.
59
chiesa
11 On the object a as ‘‘object-cause’’ of desire, see
for example J. Lacan, Le se¤minaire livre X. L’angoisse,
1962^1963 (Paris: Seuil, 2004) 120.
12 The Seminar. Book VII 187; my trans.
13 On how beauty should be located at the level of
the fundamental fantasy, see ibid. 239.
14 Ibid. 248; my trans.
15 Ibid. 249.
16 Ibid. 247.
17 Ibid. 244.
18 Ibid. 286.
19 Commentators fail to acknowledge that, in
Seminar VII, Lacan prudently follows Descartes’s
ethical legacy and repeatedly seems to suggest
that he is proposing a provisional ethics, one which
is expressed ‘‘in the form of a question’’ (ibid.109),
‘‘in an experimental form’’ (ibid. 319) and could lead
to an‘‘impasse’’ (ibid.192). Safouan is therefore per-
fectly correct when he maintains that, against
Lacan’s will, the tu ne ce¤deras pas sur ton de¤sir
‘‘was soon turned into an imperative’’ and thus
‘‘recuperated by the Super-ego’’; see M. Safouan,
Lacaniana: Les se¤minaires de Jacques Lacan,
1953^1963 (Paris: Fayard, 2001) 155. (All transla-
tions from French and Italian source materials
for which no English translation is currently
available are mine.)
20 J. Lacan, The Seminar. Book XI. The Four
Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans.
A. Sheridan (London: Vintage, 1998) 276; my
emphasis.
21 J. Lacan, Le se¤minaire livre XXIII. Le sinthome,
1975^1976 (Paris: Seuil, 2005) 138.
22 J. Stevenson, Lars von Trier (London: BFI
Publishing, 2002) 118.
23 ‘‘The Man Who Would Give Up Control,’’
interview with L. von Trier by P.O. Knudsen
(available on the internet at http://www. geocities.
com/lars____von____trier2000/interviews3.html).
24 To avoid any possible misunderstanding by
those readers familiar with Lacan’s notions of
‘‘alienation’’ and ‘‘separation,’’ as exposed particu-
larly in Seminar XI, I should emphasise how
separation is here understood as ^ in Bruce Fink’s
formula ^ ‘‘further separation,’’ i.e., as a second
separation that separates the subject from the
 lacan with von trier
Symbolic. Strictly speaking, ‘‘further separation,’’
that is, the negative moment of the traversal of
the fundamental fantasy, separates the subject
precisely from symbolic separation. Conversely,
and following Z›iz›ek, alienation is here meant to
encompass both the specific meaning of alienation
(the child’s early passive ‘‘being spoken’’ by
language) and (the first) separation (the child’s
active entrance into the Symbolic as an alienated
subject).
25 This tragic archetype of idealised woman is
confirmed by vonTrier’s early television adaptation
of Medea (1988): his particular emphasis on the
heroine as ‘‘an individual who is able to decide her
destiny, alone’’ ^ above all during the infanticide ^
has caught the attention of some classicists:
M. Rubino, for example, describes the film as
the ‘‘rewriting which in the twentieth century got
the closest to the Greek original’’; see ‘‘Medea di
Lars vonTrier’’ in M. Rubino, Medea contemporanea:
Lars von Trier, Christa Wolf, scrittori balcanici (Genoa:
Darficlet, 2002) especially 40 ^ 41.
26 For a Lacanian reading of Tarkovsky’s work,
see S. Z›iz›ek, ‘‘The Thing from Inner Space: On
Tarkovsky,’’Angelaki 4.3 (1999). In a short footnote,
Z›iz›ek himself briefly indicates how von Trier’s
Breaking the Waves and Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice adopt
a similar sacrificial logic.
27 See Lars vonTrier 8.
28 ‘‘The Thing is not nothing, but literally is not.
It is characterized by its absence’’ (The Seminar.
Book VII 63, my emphasis).
29 Z›iz›ek is therefore fully entitled to define
perversion as ‘‘inherent transgression.’’
30 Lacan’s Antigone does not compromise her
desire and thus provides evidence of the Other’s
lack (of sense). One could easily object that
Antigone opposes herself to the Other (Creon)
while promoting (the sense of) another Other,
Hades, the gods for which her brother has to be
buried, etc. However, the fact that Antigone’s
desire is a desire she advances on behalf of her
brother, and of another Other, is not important
for Lacan. The radicality of one’s desire against
the existing Other (Creon) is necessarily related,
on the surface, to the desire for some other
Other ^ in this case, ‘‘the unwritten laws’’ that
impose the duty of burial. This link is, however,
arbitrary since what really matters in the radical
character of tragic desire is its underlying identity
with a desire for the void. Consequently, Lacan is
indirectly supporting the thesis of those scholars
who think that ‘‘Antigone’s deepest motives
were purely personal’’ (see B. Knox’s
‘‘Introduction’’ in Sophocles, TheThreeTheban Plays
[Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984] 49), and who
support this thesis by referring to lines 995^99 of
Sophocles’ work where the heroine claims that
she would not have done for her children what
she did for Polynices: thus she implicitly admits
that she was not acting as a champion of the
unwritten laws. In parallel, this also means that, in
other circumstances, Antigone could easily have
defied Creon on behalf of somebody (or some-
thing) else.
31 The suicide is a pervert in so far as he acts out
his tragic fundamental fantasy. I believe the suicidal
act is more appropriately described as an acting
out ^ which, by definition, addresses itself to
the big Other ^ than as a passage a' l’acte ^ which
would, on the contrary, entail the real separation
that the one who commits suicide does not
actually achieve.
32 This is where the ambiguity of Karen’s sacrifice
lies: initially she might be thought to sacrifice
herself against the Other, since she sacrifices
herself for the group of ‘‘idiots’’ who are attempt-
ing to undermine the existing, hegemonic Other.
33 J. Lacan, Le se¤minaire livre V. Les formations de
l’inconscient, 1957^1958 (Paris: Seuil,1998) 245.
34 ‘‘Alain Badiou’s Theory of the Subject,’’ Pli 13
(2002): 175.
35 Lacan in fact writes that ‘‘the hysteric wants
a master’’ (Le se¤minaire livre XVII. L’envers de la
psychanalyse, 1969^1970 [Paris: Seuil, 1991] 150).
The hysteric does not want a new master. Indeed,
he does not need him, since he knows that there
is no master comparable to the omnipotent
one that he wants: this is his enjoyment. No
master can ever fully master himself.
36 Le se¤minaire livre XVII 205 and 239
(my emphasis).
37 Z›iz›ek uses the notion of the ‘‘sacrifice of
sacrifice’’ in a slightly different, less literal way:
for him, the sacrifice of sacrifice can in general be
equated with the suspension of one’s alienation in
the Symbolic.While fully endorsing this equation, I
nevertheless prefer to take the notion of the
‘‘sacrifice of sacrifice’’at face value here.
60

38 ‘‘Alain Badiou’s Theory of the Subject,’’ Pli 13
(2002): 206.
39 In Seminar XVII, Lacan makes some astonish-
ing remarks on Maoism, suggesting that it is a
political movement which could truly undermine
contemporary capitalism ^ whose discourse
resembles that of perversion ^ in so far as it
emphasises the importance of a return to manual
knowledge [savoir du manuel]:
What strikes me in Maoism is its reference to
manual knowledge [. . .] This re-emphasising
of the knowledge of the exploited seems to
me profoundly motivated in the structure
[. . .] In a world in which it is not scientific
thought but rather science qua objectifica-
tion that clearly emerged as a presence ^
for example, I refer to these things that are
entirely moulded by science, simply these
little things, these gadgets that occupy the
same space as we do ^ in a world in which
this emergence occurred, can the manual
know-how still be sufficiently weighty to
become a subversive factor? (See
Le se¤minaire livre XVII 174)
40 A perfect exemplification of the fact that
the Father is always (or, better, is always thought
to be) an obscene jouisseur as well as an agent
of prohibition.
41 This is a perfectly Lacanian/Z›iz›ekian lesson.
Saying ‘‘No!’’ to the Father ^ opposing the
Oedipus with an only supposedly emancipative
Anti-Oedipus ^ is not, in itself, a sufficient
guarantee that one will avoid different and more
perverse forms of subjection/enslavement.
42 From a Lacanian standpoint, before the
resolution of the Oedipus complex, we are dealing
with a subject-to-come. Therefore, subjective
destitution is strictly speaking valid only after
such a resolution.
43 Le se¤minaire livre V 329.
44 Le se¤minaire livre X 14. In this sense, the fantasy
(qua locus of the subject’s desire) is first and fore-
most a defence against the anxiety unleashed by
the Other’s desire; see also J. Lacan, Le se¤minaire
livre VI, unpublished, lesson of12 November 1958.
45 J.-A. Miller, ‘‘I sei paradigmi del godimento’’ in
J.-A. Miller, I paradigmi del godimento (Rome:
Astrolabio, 2001) 32.
61
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46 Ibid. 31.
47 Ibid. 32.
48 J.-A. Miller, ‘‘Pre¤face,’’ in Joyce avec Lacan,
ed. J. Aubert (Paris: Navarin,1987).
49 ‘‘Joyce identifies himself with the individual’’;
see J. Lacan, ‘‘Joyce le sympto“me,’’ in Le se¤minaire
livre XXIII 168.
50 ‘‘In formulating this title, Joyce-the-symptom,
I give Joyce nothing less than his proper name’’
(ibid. 162). I have myself discussed Lacan’s reading
of Joyce in greater depth in ‘‘Lacan with Artaud:
j’ou|« s-sens, jou|« s-sans, jou|« s-sens,’’ in Lacan: The Silent
Partners, ed. S. Z›iz›ek (London: Verso, 2006).
51 ‘‘Enjoyment within the Limits of Reason Alone’’
lxvi.
52 Ibid. ciii.
53 S. Z›iz›ek, Organs without Bodies: Deleuze
and Consequences (London: Routledge, 2004) 63.
54 Le se¤minaire livre XVII 82. One can deduce from
this that if only Karen had not gone crazy/com-
mitted suicide, she would be a perfect example of
such a general equation between the will ‘‘to talk
rubbish’’ (i.e., the sinthome), ‘‘being disillusioned,’’
or better, ‘‘having one’s feet on the ground’’
(i.e., accepting the inconsistency of the
symbolic order), and ‘‘adopting a different tone’’
(i.e., traversing the fundamental fantasy).
55 ‘‘The Man Who Would Give Up Control.’’
56 One should be reminded here that the same
society that promotes this motto is the one that
has definitely sanctioned the abnormality of
people affected by Down syndrome at the alleg-
edly ‘‘real’’ and irreducible level of genetics! Von
Trier perfectly depicts the antinomy according to
which, nowadays, in Western society, mentally
disabled people are to be treated both as normal,
‘‘like us,’’and as ‘‘never completely like us’’ in another
of his works, the television series The Kingdom
(1994). Here, a young couple affected with Down
syndrome is relegated to washing dishes in the
kitchens of a big hospital (this is the sort of job we
give them), while a prestigious, lucid pathologist
works out a plan to self-transplant a liver with
cancer so that it becomes his own and he can
study it in peace. While washing dishes, the
disabled couple does something else: it functions
as a sort of ‘‘inner’’ voice-over in the film, the
couple tells the truth about what is really
 lacan with von trier
happening in the hospital. In this sense, one could
argue that von Trier associates an ancient
conception of mental abnormality according to
which ‘‘madmen are not human beings, therefore
they tell the truth’’ with a contemporary one
according to which ‘‘mentally disabled people are
like us, therefore they should be allowed to work,
but it is better to keep them hidden away in the
kitchens.’’
57 At least in so far as lack is by definition a
form of dis-ability, and, following a truly Lacanian
legacy, man is first of all the product of a
contingently successful form of dis-adaptation.

Lorenzo Chiesa
School of European Culture and Languages
Cornwallis Building
University of Kent at Canterbury
Canterbury
CT2 7NF
UK
E-mail: L.Chiesa@kent.ac.uk