THE DEATH DRIVE

When Freud articulated the idea of the death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Jenseits des Lustprinzips, 1920), he transformed
himself into the psychological counterpart of a radical Hegelian without realizing it. The pleasure principle was obvious. People sought
to maximize their pleasures and minimize their pains. The ultimate pain was symbolized (and actually experienced) by death, avoided
at all costs. But, Freud concluded in a way that was broadly misunderstood, the opposite was the case. Another drive, more powerful
than the drive for pleasure, dominated human behavior and consciousness, a death drive. Note: drive, Trieb, was translated as in-
stinct until recently. Freuds drives related to the key critical objects of childhood: the breast, shit, the phallus, the gaze, and the voice.
These complex mediators (partial objects) continued to exercise an ambiguous force after first childhood encounters; they could not
be assimilated within the world of objects and, thus, were linked to the idea of the Freudian Thing (das Ding).
Unlike Whilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm, who took the life and death drives literally, as about (good, healthy, sexy) life and (bad, des-
tuctive, selfish) death and posited a program to avoid the latter and embrace the former, Freuds idea was more radical. It was about
the compulsion to repeat, to return to key positions, objects, and events that were, like the partial objects, incapable of resolution.
The death drive was circular, but the circle had a gap. Filling this gap was what Lacan later identified as the objet petit a, an irrational
source of pleasure converted from the pain of impasse. If, in the sexually driven pursuit of pleasure, space and time were transitive
media of a here-to-there mentality, the gap committed the subject to the intransitive space-time of hysteria, subject to inversion, ob-
version, and topological negation that Lacan later called extimity (extimit). Key to the text of Beyond the Pleasure Principle is Freuds
speculative interest in the biological origins of consciousness, an origin Freud locates clinically to have begun with the extremity of the
organism the place at which it is exposed to the environment. At this point, the tissue constituting the boundary between inside must
develop a callous, a scarred surface, deadened to the over-stimulation of the boundary. Later, Lacan developed this in his idea of the
lamella, akin to the skin, an imaginary organ that is both dead and alive.
What is radical about Freud is this upside-down view of subjectivity, a view that shows how the subject is fascinated with the boundary,
the terminus, the impossible passage, and impossibility as a crossing. More radical, death becomes a symbol of the terminus, not the
other way around! As a result, the subject cannot die just one death but must die twice: once literally and again symbolically (as all
cultures seem to have already known). AND, this interval between the two deaths must be radically conditioned by the idea of passage
and the impossible-but-Real. Lacan discovered Freuds truly revolutionary discovery, realized that none of his followers had recognized
it (and in fact had reversed its evidence and conclusions); Lacan based his restoration of Freud on correcting and elaborating the im-
portance of the death drive, which is ultimately the basis of the subjects relation to the world.

TRANSITIVE SPACE-TIME
the lamella
Freud takes an unexpected turn in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, seeking a material basis for the
A ~A paradox of the subject who seeks displeasure. Citing examples from biology, he notes that con-
sciousness develops at the extreme external limit of the organism, where bombardment by the
A ~A environment forces development of a layer of cells that are neither alive nor dead. This extremity
is also the center and core of the brain neurologically, a combination of extremity and interiority
that Lacan takes up in his idea of extimit. Also, this inside-out, live-dead, peripheral-central organ
simple negation is a center that is fundamentally empty because of its function as pure mediation. Compare the
(stable but illusory) lamella to examples of behavior as well as the landscape where the uncanny of the living thing
with a kernel of death and the dead thing that has forgotten how to die materialize this idea.

INTRANSITIVE SPACE-TIME hysteria is fundamental

Hysteria, the exchange of pleasure for pain and the ter-
ritorialization of the subject as body and the body of the
A ~A privation converts subject, grounds the political use of space-time as a set of

~~A ~A to prohibition opportunities by which the drama of loss is repeated ob-

sessively. This loss is also a return to this original source
of pleasure, made evident in war, where loss is actually
the goal and territory gained becomes immediately dis-
double negation pleasurable but defended to the death.
(unstable; stable through
and in repetition) Todd McGowan: The death drive emerges with subjectiv-
not being ABLE to cross the gap is perceived ity itself as the subject enters into the social order and
as an instruction not to cross; thus, law becomes a social and speaking being by sacrificing a part
of itself. This sacrifice is an act of creation that produces
the space-time model an object that exists only insofar it is lost. This loss of
what the subject does have institutes the death drive,
In the rational pleasure-seeking model, pleasure is translated into the pursuit of which produces enjoyment through the repetition of the
pleasure and the avoidance of displeasure. Objects and other subjects have a plus and original loss.
minus value based on this polarity, and the space-time separating the pleasure-seeking Loss, as a gap, is also the pivot of reversed predication
subject is also polarized. Pleasure requires a transitive space where costs of pleasure facilitating the exchange/flip between inside-outside,
can be directly computed by the costs of overcoming the space-time barriers separat- subject and other, and cause and effect. Thus the caus-
ing the subject from the source. Avoidance of displeasure is related to defensive costs al chain (the series of formations leading from efficient
of retreat, security, and isolation of threats. The death drive undermines this logic both cause to final cause and then formal/material cause) is
at the general and specific level, making even walls and lines of sight work within an disrupted at the level of materia, namely the materia of
irrational topography where approach and avoidance no longer dominate. Instead, the partial object that is key to the death drive.
the drive to repetition, memory, and the gap create a discontinuous or intransitive
spatial-temporal model, where time is converted into space and vice versa, and where Hysteria is thus both a subjective state and an environ-
virtuality must be detached rather than appended. Each materialization of the gap mental field where sites develop as exceptions to the
involves a square wave function defining the two states of anamorphosis, appear- causal order put in terms of spatio-temporal transitivity.
ance and disappearance (/-), both of which implicate the subject as a point of view
within a field of potential appearing and concealing. Note, in the diagram above, that Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Dont Have: The Political Proj-
ect of Psychoanalysis (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 2013).
double negation is the basis of linguistic emergence of the acousmatic voice.
THE OLD FREUD <1920 THE NEW FREUD >1920 Yet, this aspect of Freud is generally
The Freud of the pleasure principle establishes Discovery of the irrational dominance of the forgotten or distorted by Freudians,
a revolution of sexual awareness, demonstrat- death drive over the rational pleasure prin- who misinterpret the topological func-
ing even the infants early sexual (polymor- ciple showed that the pleasure principle was tion of the partial objects whose model,
mous) perversity, sacrificed in the face of so- fundamentally ideological, manipulated by the
cial demands but at a personal cost of neurosis. Enjoy! mandate of the Other. The death drive, the Freudian Thing, carry the logic of
This Freud of sexual liberation however sup- tied to the idea of return to the lost object that the boundary to the interior of (subjec-
ported the notion of revolutionary liberation, an was possessed only in fantasy, was then the tive) spatial fields. However, this action
investment of the libido in utopian aims that, basis of psychoanalysis, the success of which
actually, undercut themselves by denying the was thwarted by the analysands love-transfer- is evident extensively in popular cul-
hidden agendas of the death drive. ence as a last ditch effort by the unconscious ture, as iek has demonstrated.
to avoid discovery.

LACANS RESTORATION OF FREUD

With his insistence of the importance of the Mirror Stage, Lacan sought to
correct the distortions of ego-psychoanalysts to show how the gap con-
ditioned development of the subject through functions of gendering, in-
FATAL MISINTERPRETATIONS terpellation (by ideology), discourse (four standard models), and fantasy
formation (the matheme of $a, the barred subject in relations of authen-
Fromm, Reich, and others championed sexual liberation as fulfill-
ticity with fantasy, what we might call the truth of fiction. Adding spatial-
ment of Freuds legacy of opposing mental health to social repres-
temporal dimensions to this restoration project grows out of Lacans iden-
sion. They and ego psychoanalysts of the 50s inverted Freuds
tification of extimity as central to the relations of the Imaginary, Symbolic,
ideas about the death drive, simplifying it as a desire for death;
and Real domains of subjectivity (represented as a Borromeo knot, whose
instead, the death drive is about compulsion to return to an im-
integrity is produced with a topological emergence); and in this addition
possible-Real point of loss that must be fantasized in terms of a
the function of hysteria is to identify the subjects interiority with an ex-
detached virtuality where recovery can be imagined (falsely) or
teriority a field of affordance (tuch, ) within which automaton, as
where the gap is paid for, as in the case of Faust.
both chance and mechanical necessity, operates as a demonic force.
This field is present in all four of Lacans classic discourses (hysteria, uni-
versity, master, analysis) but the modality changes to fit the requirements
of agent, Other, production, and truth. Expanding Lacan via exploration of
detached virtuality connects with discourse theory, the idea of the sin-
thome, and (of course) Lacans extimity ideas, where topology is present
as agency and narratives of affordance/opportunity.

ITS WORSE FOR ARCHITECTURE

The idea of the site of exception draws from McGowan
While the positive view of the pleasure principle is fatal for psycho-
analysis, it is at least visible as a clear flaw of interpretation; correc- (film theory and political theory), iek (critical theory,
denial of tions can be made historically, textually, and critically. However for
the gap
architecture the error is embedded not in literal theoretical positions Hegel), and Dolar (acousmatic voice, love, and the uncan-
but rather in popularizations of the idea of approach/avoidance, an ny) in that the popular culture evidence of the death drive
endorsement of the natural forces of good and bad as they stimu-
late architectural response. Threats are taken literally, as are posi- can be checked at each point by theory. At the same time,
tive projects to provide shelter, utility, and social meaning. Desire in architecture
is precisely opposite of what it should be, and this reversal becomes evident with false theory based on the pleasure principle which is
the Enlightenments articulation of the problem of utility and taste, resolved in even more vitriolic than ideological mandates surround-
such matrix options as Durands rationalized plans. Within the new regime, space
itself is racisized, making invisible the agendas of projects that manipulate sub- ing the production of literal architecture and landscapes
alterns according to concealed ideological agendas, eventually appropriated by
corporations. Sites of exception continue however to reflect their traditional rela- can be shown as ideological rather than theoretical. The
tionship to the demonic of venustas, where the mandates of utility and material- death drive is a litmus test in that it insists on the gap and
ity are suspended by means of the detached virtuality of imaginary constructs.
The effectiveness and integrity of these sites of exception depend, however, on the mechanisms (automaton and tuch) that maintain it
their ability to avoid foreclosure by utopian pleasure principles, which would re-
store ideology through the disguise of nostalgia for a lost time. This is not we through reversed predication, extimacy, double inscription
should note the loss of the death drive, but precisely the opposite; a source of (the uncanny), and metalepsis.
enjoyment that substitutes, for loss, the false lure of an actualized fiction.

TODD McGOWAN SLAVOJ IEK MLADEN DOLAR

Todd McGowan shows how Late Capitalism con- ieks background in Lacanian psycho- Dolar identifies Lacans theory of the uncanny
verts the traditional cultural ability to assimilate analysis was always connected to the as well as the role of love as central to any
dissatisfaction into an obsession with consump- projects of the political, but iek grounds restoration project. Dolars independent work
tion-as-enjoyment, denying the unconsciouss Lacan and the Freudian death drive in on the acousmatic voice supplements these
need for the more complex topography of the Hegels dialectic. In the concept of Abso- two positions. Fundamentally, the uncanny
death drive. Ideology thus creates two layers, lute Knowledge, Hegels Phenomenology provides empirical/cultural evidence of the
that of (mostly corporate) producers and (dis- shows how it is possible to renounce the double inscription present with extimacy. The
incorporated) consumers, lured into false rela- notion of a future ideal merger of thought transfer of subjective qualities to the object
tionships with products they cease to enjoy as with truth but recover its glory in the shat- world comes at a cost that is imposed by
soon as they possess (hence, the cycle of rep- tered fragments of production (the spirit is the uncanny: alienation (from positions with-
etition belongs to the producers, who aim to kill a bone Hegels interest in Golgotha as in) and separation (from without). The well-
consumers literally through their toxic/destruc- the other side of phrenology). iek, with- known ploy of love transference in analysis
tive products but sustain them long enough to out mentioning metalepsis as such, shows is the final defining moment in the transfor-
maximize profits for investors). This model, how Hegels deployment of the three stag- mation of the subject from an ideological to
seemingly paranoid in the extreme, is a perfect es of negation (Verneinung, Verleugnung, (psycho)analytical, providing an alternative
fit for Lacans four discourses (master, hysteric, Ververfung) are actually the cycle of repeti- to the liberation sexuality of those who had
university, analysis), which become the only ef- tion of the death drive, with confrontation misinterpreted Freuds pleasure principle.
fective formul for political awareness and the of the impossible-Real, the Lacanian objet Loves demands constitute a forced choice for
emergence of a psychoanalytic subject able petit a, that make subjectivity identical the analyst, revealing the same three-part
to break free of the ideological subject. with the boundary-as-gap. negation structure Hegel had identified.