Of lack and national desire

In lacan the process of self formation, self being an illusion of the subject's unity, is modeled through a constant exposure to notions of otherness. The other shapes the self on its image or in opposition to it. Self is therefore a sum of others that is unable to be conscious of its multiplicity and fragmented essence. The other in this paradigm is no other than the self's own projection (a mirror image). The other exists only within the self, even though it is by becoming conscious of the exterior (the world of others) that the self enters the symbolic order. The hate or admiration directed to the other thus pertain to emotions directed to the self's own mirror image in its Danaides-like effort to fulfill its desire (and the fundamental Lack which nourishes the desire) to regain the original state of fullness and completeness that was lost with the entry into language and the symbolic order: the Real (the neo-natal state of nature of a child before it achieves the sense of separation between itself and the world of others - the Symbolic).

As Lacan so fatally proclaimed "the Real is impossible", but it is this real that constantly drives and motivates the everlasting desire for jouissance (or enjoyment as Zizek calls it). The enjoyment depends therefore on an a priori notion of Lack that can never be fulfilled (in Freud the notion of lack appears in his description of castration).

Enjoyment is seen as having existed in the prior time of fullness, or the real (a state indescribable through language) but subsequently stolen by the hated other, thus transforming the other into the reason of the non-fulfillment of the self's desire. This strategy of the subject can be formulated as follows: it is not that desire can never be fulfilled (again), but it cannot be fulfilled because of the other; the real is not impossible but it is the other that is preventing the access to it. Thus, an eternal circle of desire and lack motivates the strategies of enjoyment.

What if we were now to transpose this paradigm of an individual's self formation to a political order of group identity formation? What if the group was to become the self? If we were to rethink Benedict Anderson's notion of 'Imagined communities' as an illusion of a common image of selfhood shared by a group, it would be possible to see in this description the Lacanian illusion of unity upon which the self's very existence depends. The community's fantasy - like that of the individual Lacanian subject - is that it is one unified entity. (in Tarrying with the Negative, Zizek offers a constructive critic of Anderson's theory and argues that nationalism does possess a certain real kernel that is the very idea of it: the national 'Thing' exists as long as the community believes in its existence).

If the group is the self, then other groups are the others. In Zizek's political reading of Lacan, nationalism - and the nation - have the role of organizing the community's enjoyment; the nation has to fulfill its desire for the real. The community already takes the attributes of the 'enjoyment-seeking self'. In the case of ethnic or, as I will argue, political tensions, the possession of the national Thing is always at stake. The other is accused of stealing our enjoyment, and the hate directed to the other for an excess of enjoyment or a peculiar and perverse enjoyment are part of a desire to re-gain the state of fullness [of the nation] before the destructive intrusion of the other (and the entry of the nation into the symbolic order).

At this point some clarifications are due. The other is accused of stealing our enjoyment and depriving 'us' from a 'state of nature' (the Real) when the nation was able to satisfy its desire (or more pertinently when desire did not exist since there was no Lack, and desire is a consequence of lack, a desire to fill the lack). The other becomes the perpetrator of this un-fulfill-able lack. National myths always invoke a better past - a mythological past that is inaccessible in its 'true' or 'real' form since it can only be described through language (a golden age only accessible through fantasy - nationalist fiction can offer a pertinent illustration). This mythical past of the nation, the state of nature and completeness of the national Thing, is the real, lost once we enter into the symbolic order and become subjected to the limits of language (the world of others). The lurking idea of a lacanian real in national myths appears in narratives of a lost past - lost because of the intrusion of the other by stealing 'our' enjoyment. The other is to blame. However this past does not refer to a past time as much as it refers to a promise of future, to the very essence of desire as a desire to fulfill a lack (lack entails past), or to restage a past - that has never really existed - in a constantly escaping present. In other words, the desire can only be fulfilled in the future, and therefore can never be fulfilled.