Lacan’s Thing smuggles the Real back into representation, restoring lack

Evidence

In the end, we must answer this question in the negative. It seems, in fact, that a new form of “soldering” intervenes to make it impossible for Lacan, no matter what he says, to think destruction without remainder. This new “soldering” would be that of what Lacan calls “the Thing”: das Ding. This “Thing”—“the absolute other of the subject,” this “prehistoric Other that it is impossible to forget,” this “nothing,” this “emptiness,” this “hole,” this originary trauma—remains, to my mind, that aspect of the Real that can be said and imagined. Indeed, the Thing is “that which in the real… suffers from the signifier.” The Thing is the aspect of the Real that still happens; that, in spite of everything, happens to me. — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 2853

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The core of Malabou’s assault on Lacan: das Ding functions as a residual ‘soldering’ that converts the unencounterable Real into a thinkable origin — a move that betrays the very excess it claims to honor.
• XREF: This is the hinge of the whole book’s debate with psychoanalysis — directly parallels her treatment of trauma in earlier chapters where she insists the wound has no dialectical home. — connects to: For Lacan the real only becomes graspable through symbolic inscription. — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 2938; Reality constitutes itself by repressing an unrepresentable Real — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 40; The Real reasserts itself through attempts to flee it. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 518 (+1 more)
• SEED: A winnable essay: ‘How das Ding betrays the Real’ — showing that Lacan’s originary ‘hole’ is itself a recontainment, so even radical psychoanalysis domesticates catastrophe.

Broader Connections

• For Lacan the real only becomes graspable through symbolic inscription. #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 2938