Two Conceptions of Desire

The concept of "Two Conceptions of Desire" is introduced in the source todd-mcgowan-dominik-finkelde-eds-zizek-responds-bloomsbury-publishing-2022 as a corrective to what the author regards as Žižek's theoretical conflation: the move of reducing all desire to alienated, Other-directed longing, and then simply discarding it in favour of the drive. Against this, the source distinguishes a first conception of desire — desire as yoked entirely to the desire of the Other, structured by fantasy in the Lacanian sense of $◇a, and circling endlessly around a lost object it can never possess — from a second conception that is non-alienated and approaches, without fully merging with, the drive. The first conception corresponds to the standard Lacanian definition of desire as metonymic, Other-constituted, and sustained by the fantasy frame: it is desire as lack, perpetually deferred, whose "truth" is the alienation of the subject in the signifying chain of the Other. This is the desire that Žižek rightly critiques as an obstacle to genuine subjective transformation.

The second conception marks a limit-point of desire where the subject's relation to its own sinthome — the idiosyncratic, Real knot of jouissance that is irreducible to any signifying substitution — becomes operative. Here desire "draws close to the drive" without collapsing into it: it passes through sublimation, which the canonical definition of das Ding renders as "raising an object to the dignity of the Thing." Sublimation functions as a shield, transmitting jouissance in tolerable, partial doses rather than delivering the full, annihilating proximity to das Ding. This second desire thereby provides a "real," partial satisfaction — not the endless deferral of the first conception, nor the full circular self-satisfaction of the drive, but something in between: an ethical orientation grounded in fidelity to the subject's singular desire, consistent with Seminar VII's injunction not to give ground relative to one's desire.

This concept appears in todd-mcgowan-dominik-finkelde-eds-zizek-responds-bloomsbury-publishing-2022 as part of a polemical intervention against Žižek's reading of Lacan. It is situated at the intersection of several canonical concepts: Desire, Drive, Das Ding, Ethics of Psychoanalysis, and Fantasy. The first conception of desire maps directly onto the canonical definition of Desire as alienated, Other-constituted, and fantasy-sustained ($◇a): it is desire in its standard Lacanian guise — metonymic, unfulfillable, governed by the lost object and objet petit a. The second conception functions as a specification or corrective extension of the Ethics of Psychoanalysis: it preserves the Seminar VII injunction to maintain fidelity to one's desire while accounting for how desire can approach the Real satisfaction of the Drive without simply becoming it. The concept of sublimation — drawn from the canonical account of Das Ding as what sublimation "raises an object to the dignity of" — is crucial here, since it names the mechanism by which the second conception of desire mediates proximity to jouissance without dissolving the desiring subject entirely.

The concept thus positions itself against a reading (attributed to Žižek) that treats the Drive as the exclusive site of liberated subjectivity and desire as merely symptomatic of alienation. By insisting on a second, non-alienated desire, the source aligns more closely with the Lacanian Ethics of Psychoanalysis as defined in Seminar VII — where refusing the "service of goods" and maintaining fidelity to desire are the ethical core — rather than with any wholesale subordination of desire to the drive's circular self-satisfaction. The concept is best understood as a specification within Lacanian ethics: not a revision of canonical theory, but a disambiguation that defends desire's own ethical potential against its wholesale dismissal.

Žižek Responds!Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.) · 2022 (page unknown)

he operates with two different conceptions of desire: the first is the kind that Žižek (correctly) demonizes because it yokes the subject to the desire of the Other, but the second is the kind that, in touching something about the 'truth' of the subject's sinthome… draws close to the drive

The quote is theoretically loaded because it names both the structural distinction (two conceptions) and its ethical stakes simultaneously: the phrase "yokes the subject to the desire of the Other" invokes the canonical formula of desire's alienation, while "touching something about the 'truth' of the subject's sinthome" imports the late-Lacanian register of the Real — the sinthome as irreducible, unsymbolizable knot — as the condition under which desire can "draw close to the drive" without being dissolved into it.