Perseverance in Being

Perseverance in Being names the mode of singularity that precedes and resists conceptual or social capture — an irreducible, immediate adherence to existence that cannot be adequately represented by any abstraction, including the abstractions furnished by the Symbolic order. On the page where it appears (psychoanalytic-interventions-lacan-jacques-lacan-jacques-ruti-mari-the-singulari, p. 15), the concept is mobilized against the post-Lacanian position that locates singularity exclusively in "subjective destitution" — that is, in a radical break with the Symbolic. The argument is that this move wrongly universalizes alienation, collapsing the distinction between the structural, constitutive alienation that is the condition of any subject (the vel of alienation: being vs. meaning) and the contingent, circumstantial forms of alienation that may or may not characterize a particular life.

The theoretical wager is that perseverance in being must be anchored at the level of the Lacanian Real — specifically, in drive energies. The drive, understood as a constant, non-rhythmic force that loops around an unattainable object and achieves satisfaction in the circuit itself, is precisely what is not fully captured or extinguished by the Symbolic order. This residue — which insists, which perseveres — is what constitutes the individual as singular rather than merely as an instance of a type. Where alienation represents the price the subject pays to enter meaning, perseverance in being names what the subject retains, beneath symbolization, as its own irreducible existential remainder.

Within the source (psychoanalytic-interventions-lacan-jacques-lacan-jacques-ruti-mari-the-singulari), perseverance in being functions as a counter-concept to subjective destitution and as a positive characterization of singularity. It is an extension and specification of the Lacanian Real: whereas the Real is defined across the corpus as what resists symbolization absolutely and what "always returns to the same place," perseverance in being names the subject-side of that resistance — not an abstract structural hole, but the living insistence of a particular subject's drive energies in the face of symbolic capture. It thus narrows the Real from a general structural category to a description of individual existential tenacity.

The concept also stands in a diagnostic relation to alienation. Alienation, in its Lacanian sense, is irremediable — the subject cannot escape the vel that forces the loss of either being or meaning. But perseverance in being implies that alienation does not consume everything: something at the level of the Real (drive) outlasts the alienating operation and constitutes the ground of singularity. This is simultaneously a critique and a refinement of the subjective destitution position, which, by making the break with the Symbolic the privileged site of singularity, effectively makes alienation total and leaves no theoretical space for distinguishing one subject's Real from another's. The concept also resonates with the Ethics of Psychoanalysis insofar as fidelity to one's desire — not giving ground relative to it — requires precisely this kind of perseverance in one's singular being against the pressures of the "service of goods."

The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal WithinMari Ruti · 2012 (p.15)

man's singularity emerges from an immediacy of existence—from 'a perseverance in being'—that cannot be grasped by abstractions.

The phrase "immediacy of existence" is theoretically loaded because it marks the pre-symbolic or infra-symbolic stratum — the level of the Real and drive — as the site of singularity, directly opposing any account that would locate the singular only within or against the Symbolic; "cannot be grasped by abstractions" then closes the argument by declaring the structural insufficiency of all conceptual (including psychoanalytic-theoretical) totalization with respect to this residue.