It’s good for socio-political analysis

What else can Lacanian theory be offering? Let us try to answer this question by simultaneously summarising our argumentation up to now. Our first point was that Lacanian theory can be relevant for socio-political analysis because it offers a ‘socio-political’ conception of subjectivity. The subjective is no longer ‘subjective’ in the traditional sense of the word which presupposes the identification of the subject with the conscious ego. The subject is equivalent to the lack which stands at the root of the human condition. This view of subjectivity permits the development of a psychoanalytic approach to the socio-political level, to social reality, since social reality is the locus in which the subject as lack seeks its absent fullness. One should not get the impression, though, that this fullness can be reconstructed through identification in the socio-symbolic level; this level is also lacking. And this is perhaps the most radical thesis that Lacanian theory offers to a reconsideration of the socio-political plane. If the subjective is no longer ‘subjective’, the objective is also no longer ‘objective’ in the sense of a closed structure, of an entity capable, under certain circumstances, of filling the lack in the subject. The field of representation is itself revealed as lacking because it attempts the impossible, that is to say, the representation of something ultimately unrepresentable. Representation is the representation of a real fullness which is always beyond our grasp.