浪🧩📞 LACAN LESSONS 浪🧩📞

Lacan’s torus articulates the relation between demand and desire [1]. Examine this image:

The three circles around the torus indicate any three demands, which are designated A, B, C.

In theory, this simple model can be generalized to any number of demands, but it’s impossible to visualize any models with four or more demands. Since our imagination works better in the spatial world, it’s better to stick to this simple visual model, while also keeping in mind that the topic at hand actually takes place in a combinatorial (non-spatial) unworld [2].

There are two distinct empty spaces on this torus image: (1) The middle hole of the torus indicates a combined demand for everything, (2) The empty space around the torus indicates the absence of demand.

The volume of the torus is located between these two spaces. The ring around the center is the intersectional field where desire circulates among multiple demands: The subject initially demands A, then (s)he also demands B, then (s)he only demands B, then (s)he also demands C, and so on. This movement of desire practically divides the subject among multiple demands.

The combined demand for everything at the center, insofar as it drives the circulation of desire through the intersectional field around the center, effectively functions as a pure demand for nothing, which coincides with the demand for love (or the demand to be acknowledged as an interlocutor) that is common to all demands. This is why the center is emptied and we have a torus instead of a sphere. This means that desire remains dissatisfied because it sustains itself by preserving its lack. Lacan formulated this central voiding as follows: “I ask you to refuse what I offer you because that’s not it.”

To see what Lacan’s torus means for politics, let’s give some examples.

Take A = class, B = race, C = gender. The central void indicates the perfect politics that would combine all three axes in a progressive way. However, this ideal is never achieved. Instead, this political ideal effectively drives the incessant movement of desire around the intersectional field. If the political ideal shifts the demand from class to gender, it misses race. If it shifts the demand from gender to race, it misses class. It will never achieve the perfect politics that would really combine all three axes, but it will also never cease to rotate around the ring.

Now let’s remember the Bolshevik slogan that helped found the Soviet Union in 1917. Take A = Peace, B = Land, C = Bread. Again the central void indicates the ideal world (not yet called “Communism”) that would satisfy all the essential needs of the people. But it cannot be actually achieved. Instead, it functions as a great motivation for human desire to traverse the intersectional field around the center. One initially demands Peace, then explores its intersection with Land, then loses sight of Peace and shifts towards Bread, etc. In brief, the triple combo can never be achieved and the political desire will always sustain its lack and remain ultimately dissatisfied. The Master-Signifier “Communism” comes to conceal and politically steer this fundamental dissatisfaction of the people.

Another example is Lacan’s own model for the psyche. Take A = Imaginary, B = Symbolic, C = Real. The central void, which Lacan calls the objet petit a, indicates the impossible combination of the three registers. It effectively drives the desire to explore the intersections between the registers. Lacan placed the following terms on the circular trajectory of human desire: death, phallic jouissance, life, Other’s jouissance, body, sense [3].

Another recent example is Gabriel Tupinambá’s The Desire of Psychoanalysis (2021): Take A = institution, B = clinic, C = concept. The full combination that would achieve the ideal of psychoanalysis is essentially the objet petit a which drives Tupinambá’s “desire of psychoanalysis” through the intersectional field around the central void. The true function of “would” in the English language is to mark this empty center of the torus.

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] See “Demand and Desire on Lacan’s Torus”

[2] See “Spatial and Combinatorial”

[3] See “Around the Borromean Knot”