Lectures on The Logic of Fantasy (Seminar XIV)

In our final session on the drive, I claimed there are two pathways from desire to the drive, both clearly outlined in Lacan’s iconic graph of desire:

The first pathway is brazenly direct, passes due north from desire to the drive, and is well-represented by the figure of Alcibiades in Plato’s Symposium. Which is why Alcibiades makes several cameos in Lacan’s middle work, most notably in his essay on the subversion of the subject and, a bit later, in his essay on Freud’s Trieb.

The second route from desire to the drive is more circuitous — but also, in my view, more rewarding. In the graph above, it passes from desire to fantasy to signifiers of lack in the Other to the drive. If the first pathway follows the stumbling route of Alcibiades, the second pathway, as Lacan well notes in Écrits, is “watched out for by an evil god.” And if you attended our series on Seminar XI or our sessions on the drive (all accessible HERE), you know this evil god by name: a n x i e t y .

Of the five key terms in this second pathway — desire, fantasy, signifier of the barred Other, anxiety, and the drive — only one remains to be covered by Lectures on Lacan: fantasy. So that’s exactly where we’re headed now! Next up for our live lecture series, starting November 9th, is Lacan’s 1966-1967 seminar on The Logic of Fantasy (Seminar XIV). 🔥

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When we’ll be meeting and what we'll be reading:

10am-1pm PST | 1pm-3pm EST | 7pm-10pm CET

9 November: The Logic of Fantasy, seminars 1-6, pp. 1-65.

16 November: The Logic of Fantasy, seminars 7-12, pp. 66-133.

7 December: The Logic of Fantasy, seminars 13-18, pp. 134-200.

14 December: The Logic of Fantasy, seminars 19-24, pp. 201-276.

Note: We’ll be working through many key passages as a group, so don’t worry if you fall behind on the readings.

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Costs to attend:

$20 per session or $60 for the full series:

You can also help to sustain Lectures on Lacan by making a donation today: 

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How to attend:

Registered participants will receive a Zoom link before each session via email.

Each lecture will also be recorded and shared with participants the following day, so no worries if you miss anything, as you’ll have access to each recording.

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About Prof. Dr. McCormick:

Samuel McCormick, Ph.D., is an award-winning teacher and scholar. He lectures widely on Lacanian psychoanalysis, is Professor of Communication Studies at San Francisco State University, and was recently appointed EURIAS & Marie-Curie Research Fellow at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark. His first book, Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals, won the Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression, the James A. Winans - Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address, and the Everett Lee Hunt Award. His second book, The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk, was recently published by the University of Chicago Press.

More about Lectures on Lacan and Prof. Dr. McCormick HERE.