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Objet petit a

11:57 / 29.10.02

Can somebody give me an explanation of Lacan's idea of the object petit a? I've been searching for it on the net but it as if it doesn't exist. Googling overwhelms me with irrelevant info. Where should I go?

I just had an introductary tutorial for Lacan which used the film walkabout as a reference and an explanation for certain points. For objet petit a we looked at the concluding scene of the film. The girl who was previously lost in the desert was now a housewife. Her husband came home, embraced her and started to talk at her about promotion prospects within his firm. During this the film flashed to an idyllic scene in a desert oasis with her brother and the aborigine. The point seemed to be that the objet petit a was an idyllic desire ... that doesn't even exist because the oasis scene never actually took place.

Is that a useful way to picture things?

12:54 / 29.10.02

God, Lacan is vilely hard. I'm told that the Beginner's Guide (or I think they're called "Introduction To" these days, the ones with lots of pictures in, in a semi-comix style) is very good, so that might be a good place to start.

The only thing I know about the objet a is that the "petit a" in English would be translated a "small o" (for 'other', 'autre' in French or possibly autrui, I get them muddled up). The objet a, which includes things like the (mother's) gaze and the (mother's) voice, is an object of desire and hence other to the subject, but not the Big Other who is the Father/Name of the Father/ God.

Mostly, though, when people start going on about Lacan I just run away and hide. Sorry. The film sounds like a good illustration, though, in that the little Lacanian theory I've picked up centres around the "idyllic scene that never took place", ie identity-formation through the retrospective projection of fantasies of wholeness, etc.

14:47 / 31.10.02

I also find Lacan vewwwy vewwwy difficult.

I like Slavov Zizek as a guide to Lacan; he's an unabashed disciple, fervent in his devotion, and uses film to make his points.

I also found Jane Gallop's work on Lacan very helpful when I was struggling with it.

Lacan's seminars are fuller, easier reads than his Ecrits.

I agree with Deva that the description you've given of objet petit a sounds about right, but I'm also no expert on the man.

alas!

Goodness Gracious Meme

22:51 / 13.11.02

found this:

The fort/da game that the nephew played, in Freud's account, is in Lacan's view a marker of the entry into the Symbolic, because Hans is using language to negotiate the idea of absence and the idea of Otherness as a category or structural possibility.

The spool, according to Lacan, serves as an "objet petit a," or "objet petit autre"--an object which is a little "other," a small-o other. In throwing it away, the child recognizes that others can disappear; in pulling it back, the child recognizes that others can return. Lacan emphasizes the former, insisting that Little Hans is primarily concerned with the idea of lack or absence of the "objet petit autre."

The "little other" illustrates for the child the idea of lack, of loss, of absence, showing the child that it isn't complete in and of itself. It is also the gateway to the Symbolic order, to language, since language itself is premised on the idea of lack or absence.

Lacan says these ideas--of other and Other, of lack and absence, of the (mis)identification of self with o/Other--are all worked out on an individual level, with each child, but they form the basic structures of the Symbolic order, of language, which the child must enter in order to become an adult member of culture.

from here, which I think is a reasonably good basic definition of le petit a(utre)

Goodness Gracious Meme

22:52 / 13.11.02

also this:

Lacan himself distinguished between the objet petit a, a simple object of desire, as in the case of a one individual desiring another, and what he called the grand Autre (sometimes translated "the capital Other"), which he defined as the place of speech and therefore of desire operating within the symbolic.

In other words, "other" simply means dissimilar, excluded, opposite, while "Other" means the more abstruse region of the pure signifier. Although neither of these terms necessarily denote women, some subsequent writers persist in using "Other" to refer to women from the viewpoint of patriarchy. See also ganz Andere, heterogeneity, heteroglossia.

09:09 / 16.11.02

Thanks for the replies everyone. I don't have any real need to delve deeply into Lacan, just found this interesting. I found the object petit a quite an intuitive idea, almost a common sense view of the world. I thought perhaps I picked it up incorrectly though.

Quite a lovely melancholy idea. The true object of your desire, that which will make you happy, doesn't exist, never existed and never will exist.

There was a bit of a limited discussion in class about that. The tutor thinks that it does exist although only momentarily. I'd tend to agree. I think it is possible to desire, to achieve, to be fulfilled, then to be content - but not permanently. I suppose desire is a type of motivating frustration whereas achievement is essentially demotivating and includes a certain disillusionment, a realisation of the impossibility of truly gaining the previous desire because it doesn't exist.

I'm not sure if really have a grip on the theory. Does the object petit a exist?