Alexey Tkachev. Heroes of desire. Joker and Antigone. Vol. 4. No. 2. 2019

Publication Details

Heroes of desire. Joker and Antigone
Title in the language of publication: Герои желания. Джокер и Антигона
Author:
Alexey Tkachev
Master of Software Engineering, Psychoanalyst at the Freud-Lacan Psychoanalysis School.
Address: 18A Bolshoy Prospekt of Petrograd Side, St. Petersburg 197198, Russia.
Issue:
P. 48–62.
Language: Russian
Document type: Research Article
 
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Abstract

In the seminar “Ethics of Psychoanalysis”, Jacques Lacan said that a subject can only be guilty of “failing to follow his desire”. In the same seminar, Lacan says that an analyst is able to give an analysand what no spouse is able to give — his own desire. In this paper, we examined the figure of hero of desire in order to shed light on some aspects of the significance of these maxims for analytical theory and practice.

The hero of desire has a special place in the corpus of psychoanalytic thought of Lacan. He appears one of the points in his doctrine from which it is possible to pave the way to important concepts of psychoanalysis: transference, desire and atopy. In the article we turn to the trajectories of the heroes of two myths, modern and classic, Todd Phillips’ Joker and Sophocles’ Antigone to find out how a subject may become a hero of desire. Approaching this topic also from topological perspective, we examine the configuration of desire of a subject in the conditions of psychoanalytic scene, relying on the concepts of phallic function, symbolic castration and position of the object-cause of desire in relation to signifying order, simultaneously identifying the role that analyst plays in this process. These two ways will help us to identify the subject at a key point, where he, having met with the dimension of his own desire, becomes atopic in relation to the field of politics of goods.

Keywords

Joker, Antigone, hero of desire, atopy, myth, superhero films, castration.

References 

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© Alexey Tkachev, 2019

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