Utsav Banerjee
University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. Email: banerjee.utsav@gmail.com.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0248-6345
Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.67
Abstract
Repression of the Real is a function of the coming-into-being of the Symbolic Order. That which is repressed resurfaces in the Symbolic, thereby threatening its order. What resurfaces is the non-repressible remainder, an excess that can neither be conceptualized nor can be eliminated. This remainder of the Real is what Lacan refers to as objet petit a or simply objet a. Objet is French for object, petit is French for small, and a is the first letter in the French autre, meaning other. In casual English translation, therefore, the objet a is essentially the small other. For Lacan, the objet a is a signifier of the Real that is lost in the process of symbolic constitution of the subject which resurfaces in the Symbolic Order. Its name is a misnomer in that it is not an object at all. It is rather a non-object because what is originarily lost is nothing—the original loss or the lost object is only a retroactive construction. And it is this loss that becomes the cause of desire, precisely because of the fact as a loss/lack it provides the necessary immaterial basis for desire—we desire what we have lost or currently lack. In other words, objet a is the object-cause of desire. It is equivalent of the partial object in Freud. Freud speaks of three partial objects—namely, breasts, faeces, and phallus; in Lacan, we find two more—namely, the voice and the gaze. This paper examines the voice and the gaze as objet a in Lacan.
Keywords: objet a, repression, the gaze, Lacanian Real, partial object.