Desire
In Lacanian thought, a demand results when a lack in the Real is transformed into the Symbolic medium of language. Whether or not demands achieve their apparent aims, they are always successful in the sense that all parapraxes or slips of the tongue are successful - they faithfully express unconscious signifying formations. But because the Real is never totally symbolizable, a residue or kernel of desire is left behind by every demand, representing a lost surplus of jouissance for the subject. For Lacan, 'desire is situated in dependence on demand - which, by being articulated in signifiers, leaves a metonymic remainder which runs under it'. Inherently 'frustrated demand is what gives birth to desire': "Don't give me what I ask for, that's not it."
Read more about this topic: Demand (psychoanalysis)
Famous quotes containing the word desire:
“It is to be presumed, that a man of common sense, who does not desire to please, desires nothing at all; since he must know that he cannot obtain anything without it.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 13:12.
“For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.”
—John Boyle O’Reilly (1844–1890)