Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 42, 2018

Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

Death and Desire: Lacan (ren)contre Derrida

Lacanian (No)Thing appears as the nothing of the limit of re/presentation, of the edge of language: in this appearance the realization of nothing affirms itself as the res of the limit, which gives rise to the disappropriation of the limit. The origin is desire, the edge of passion and pain which are the instances of jouissance, pleasure-at-the-limit. Liminal pleasure, between life and death marks lacking desire as – essentially – self-destructive passion, possible only through instantaneous oscillation between absence and sense, infinite finitude being its edge. Death and life form a radical continuity where the subject becomes the non-extensive point of exchange between life and death. Thus, to live, finally, would mean to inhabit the border-line between the subject and the Thing; to touch the untouchable, or experience the impassable between life and death. This is the place of Lacanian ré(si)stance: between life and death the encounter with the real takes place, mis/encounter, there being no place of the real as well no place of the encounter; the ré(si) stance of the death drive itself.