Relations of the Real in Lacan, Bataille and Blanchot

Abstract

THE REAL IS A SLIPPERY THING. That is, if it in the first place, and if it a thing in the second. Lacan's is no less slippery. Frequently discussed as the Real, or elevated to the status of concept-the Real Order, its definite place or theoretical definition rather goes against its elusive and apparently indeterminable nature. Indeed, the irony of using the definitive article with a capitalized noun for something that seems so utterly indefinite and undefinable broaches the paradoxical situation of the real and the slides into paradox that mark encounters with writings about the real. Encounters with the real that is if is a real itself, or if those encounters were not always affected by the language in which the subject is necessarily constructed, would not be paradoxical since the real is just there, there not functioning as a demonstrative but representing the unrepresentable beyond of systems of reference, designation and signification. Quite simply, the real remains what is, an unspeakable is, an impossible, inexpressible, ineffable and undifferentiated space outside language. The real, then, lies beyond systems of signification; it ex-ists outside Lacan's symbolic order. It is defined as that which cannot be defined, that which is alien to or resists signification, that which exceeds symbolization. Utterly Other, the real is Other to subjects of language but has immense effects in its unpresentable in/difference. In psychoanalysis, the missed encounter with the real recalls the effects of trauma, a trauma inassimilable to consciousness, forming the lost origin of neurosis and the basis of neurotic repetition. Every day the real exceeds systems of signification, generating an excess or a remainder in relation to which desire inscribes its object. Irrupting into and from within symbolic boundaries, the real evinces the extimacy, the intimate exteriority that Lacan associates with the Thing (1992: 139). Exceeding symbolic boundaries, the real intimates an alterity that is simultaneously absolute difference and total indifference, a doubleness echoed in Freud's account of the unconscious's disrespect for